Wolf Prince
by The Daxinator
Summary: (Aegon x Jon Snow) When now King Aegon VI and his Queen Daenerys are persuaded to march North to deal with the menace of the White Walkers, Aegon does not expect to find the Stark-bastard so...irresistible, and Jon Snow didn't realize he'd have such a hard time saying 'no' to yet another pushy King hosted at the Wall. (Of Wolf Princes and Dragon Kings Part 1) AO3 for NEW CHAPTERS!
1. Chapter 1 - A Pull Like Gravity

A/N: First, some background info: Aegon and Dany are ruling Westeros together by the end of 301. The first cries for aid come from the Nights Watch in 299—Stannis answers during this time.

Ever since I posted NMS, people have been asking for Jon and Aegon's meeting at the Wall. Originally, I just had an explanation all of 1200 words long in the next chapter of NMS, but then I realized that I too wanted to really -see- their meeting, and thus this story was born. So thank you everyone who encouraged me to do so.

Good things come to those that ask. (^.^)

* * *

It is close to two months into their joint rule that he and his new Queen first receive a desperate call for aid from the far, far North. From the Nights Watch in fact, a brotherhood that he only has the barest awareness of, and seems to suffer from a vast difference of perception among the members of his court, depending on whether they or their families hale from either north or south of the Neck. The Southron lords laugh and call it an open prison for rapers and killers, while those of the North swear that it is an Order whose call should be respected and answered with all haste.

Aegon supposes that the fact that the Lord Commander is said to be the last remaining son of the North's beloved Lord Eddard Stark doesn't hurt their fervor. Indeed, within short order, there are subtle hints that Eddard Stark's son should be released from his vows and allowed to take up the seat of Winterfell. Daenerys and Lord Connington are rendered livid by the suggestions, their hatred of all things Stark nursed by long years of exile.

If she wasn't married to the Lord of the Vale, Aegon imagines that they might have demanded that Sansa Hardyng be dragged into King's Landing and executed for her father's crimes as well. He is glad to be spared from sharing their all consuming hatred, as he can see how it eats them both alive. He has given thought to to perhaps acquiesce to the Northerners' request simply to thwart their blood lust and prove that he is above it himself.

But then Missandei reads the letter aloud to the court and suddenly the few Northmen present start to shift uncomfortably as the details of the letter are made public. They remain silent afterward. He thinks that perhaps they are embarrassed to have spoken so glowingly of the man only for him to be revealed as a lunatic.

Their new southron lords, on the other hand, laugh and jest about the superstitious Northmen; so addled with cold that they have been jumping at Snarks and Grumpkins and sending out ravens that read like the ravings of a madman for more than two years.

The prolonged time that the ravens have been coming strikes him immediately as odd, but their rule is young and they cannot afford to publicly give too much credence to something that their whole court deems beyond ridiculous. Not only might it make he and Daenerys appear inexperienced and naive, but with reports of such a fantastical nature, they could open themselves up to questions of their own sanity. An unfortunate byproduct of their family's history and the sheer number of infamous and highly public incidents of Targaryen Madness, his own grandfather's disastrous rule and end merely the most recent. Add on to it the stubbornly remaining whispers that even his father, the lauded Silver Prince, may have been showing signs of madness when he took Lyanna Stark… Well, let's just say that he and Daenerys have their work cut out for them when it comes to proving which side the coin has landed on for them.

Aegon has grown up under the shadow of his father's beliefs in a mystical 'Prince that was Promised', Jon Connington having waxed on at length about Prince Rhaegar's determination that Aegon was this legendary figure. He himself does not put any stock in it, and thinks that possibly the whispers are right and Rhaegar Targaryen did have a measure of the Targaryen Madness—albeit a very tame version in comparison to his father Aerys. Aegon cannot allow his own reputation to be tarnished by rumors that he lives according to some delusional prophecy or gets worked up over things that go bump in the cold nights up North.

These are the primary concerns that prevent him from pursuing the matter of the strange message from the North despite his curiosity. Daenerys herself, with her immense hatred for all things even remotely Stark-related, certainly had no interest in going to the aid of a group that followed a Stark bastard, last they'd heard. Strangely enough, while the raven they had received did bear the name of Jon Snow, Eddard Stark's bastard son, the man had neglected to title himself beyond his name. To his best knowledge, Stark's bastard was elected Lord Commander within the last couple of years. When he later brings it up discretely with the maester, the man corroborates his supposition and confirms that until the last few messages, Jon Snow has indeed signed as Lord Commander, Jon Snow.

It is curious, but Aegon writes it off quickly enough as the man having been ousted peacefully from his position and relegated instead to a place of steward to the new Lord Commander. Although why the unknown man would not at least sign official documents himself rather than leave a steward to do it, he cannot fathom. Perhaps as an attempt to humble and remind an impertinent former Lord Commander of his new place by having to write and send out the same ravens as before, but without his lofty title.

Whatever the case, he determines to put the matter firmly from his mind and focus only on solidifying both his marriage and his rule. They have taken the South and hunting down the remnants of the Lannister men and their few allies is simply a matter of patience and good intel. Otherwise the South is at peace and he and Daenerys at last sit the Iron Throne—alternating who physically sits upon the throne daily because they are both loath to cede absolute power to the other. In time, the North _will_ bend the knee and give up their aspirations of secession, but now is not the time to march their weary army straight back into another battle. First they will secure everything south of the Neck.

Ravens from the Wall continue to come to King's Landing, and though he largely ignores them, he does acknowledge with a small measure of amused respect that Jon Snow is at least a stubborn man. His undaunted dedication to his beliefs is admirable, however mad he must be to talk of corpses rising from the dead and creatures from children's stories. Aegon even begins to look forward to these messages as a source of entertainment as the tone and language of each grows increasingly scathing and insulting.

Nonetheless, busy as he is, he does not notice that the ravens experience a lull in the fourth month of his rule. Not until, late in the afternoon one day, he is informed that a man of the Watch is there in the Keep requesting an audience with the King and Queen—and a maester, oddly enough.

When Missandei comes to tell them, he and Daenerys are sitting in his solar eating an early dinner together while discussing an incident that occurred earlier in the day. Aegon raises a skeptical brow in the direction of the window, through which the orange light of the dying sun can be seen bathing the city.

"It is nearly nightfall," he scoffs, "Tell him to seek a bed in the city and come back for an audience during the morning court."

Missandei's brows furrow and she looks to Daenerys. "He says that he needs the contents of a large metal box he has brought with him from the Wall to be examined by a Maester before dark and he insists that it is imperative that you and His Grace witness the event. He swears that you will understand when you see it."

"And what was in this box?" Daenerys asks.

"I did not see," the girl replies, "It was thoroughly chained shut. He had it carried into the Throne room though."

He and Daenerys share a look, neither of them pleased that some Nights Watchman believes he can compel the King and Queen of Westeros to go scurrying about simply on his word, but… He admits that he, for one, is curious and he sees in Dany's eyes that she is as well. The worst that could happen is that the man turns out to be crazy like the former Lord Commander, Jon Snow—

"What is his name, Missandei?" he asks sharply, "Is it Jon Snow? That madman who won't stop sending ravens about fairy tales beyond the Wall?" Madmen are only amusing from afar, and if that one has traveled all the way to King's Landing, Aegon is tempted to clap him in irons just to be on the safe side. Thankfully Missandei shakes her head.

"He did not give a name, Your Grace. But he is an older man—much too old to be Jon Snow."

He hums thoughtfully and meets Daenerys' gaze with a shrug. "What could it hurt to indulge him? It sounds serious enough and if it isn't, he can maybe be made to waste some of his own time—in the cells."

His wife gives an elegant little shrug of her own and stands. "Well then, if we're going to meet him before sunset, we best go now. And Missandei, have a maester meet us in the Throne room as well, I suppose."

They go down together, each donning their crowns, and enter the room to find a solitary figure sitting on a large metal box. Iron, his mind supplies absently as his gaze sweeps over the man's gray hair and shaggy beard. Too old, indeed, to be Eddard Stark's bastard, who is supposed to be younger than himself. The man appears greatly fatigued as he stares anxiously out the windows, concerned perhaps about how fast the sunset fades. When he sees them approach, he clamors to his feet and greets them with a distracted "Your Grace" and begins immediately to unlock the thick chains around his box.

Only, it looks less like a box, to his eyes, and rather more like a coffin.

Ser Rolly and Ser Barristan, members of he and Daenerys' separate Kingsguard and Queensguard, step between them and the Nights Watchman warily. The man pays them no mind, does not even seem to notice their reaction, and shoves the last of the chains off after a brief struggle to untangle them. He begins to speak as he pries up the lid.

"Good, I worried you'd be too late to see it before it wakes. The dead too far south of the Wall aren't affected, but once one has been raised, no matter how far you go, it doesn't lose the taint. Lord Snow—oh damn it, the damned thing feels like it's been welded shut—Lord Snow, though, he ordered me to bring one of these as evidence, what with the whole South apparently thinking we're a bunch of simpletons pissing ourselves over shadows up at the Wall. I was worried it might stop moving after a I got too far from the Wall, but I'll be damned if it doesn't wake up every fucking night. (*) Ah...Beg your pardon, Your Graces."

The black brother gets the lid off with a final heave just as the maester Daenerys sent Missandei after walks in the room. A strange smell makes itself known in the air now, one that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end for some reason. He doesn't recognize it and he can only describe the smell as...cold—if cold could have a smell.

They all draw close cautiously to see the mysterious contents and Aegon immediately curls his lip in disgust upon perceiving that his estimation of the container being a coffin was truer than he realized.

"Proof, you say?" Daenerys scowls as they both step away, their sworn shields' hands now on their swords. "The only proof this constitutes is that the Nights Watch really is full of madmen. Guards! Get this atrocity out of the Throne room and arrest this man while the King and I decide whether to send him back to the Wall or execute him."

Aegon slants her a wry look for how she takes utter control of the situation without so much as glancing at him, something they will eventually have to work out if they are to rule successfully together. But before he can say anything to her, the pale corpse begins to _writhe_.

"The fuck?!" he hears Rolly swear, the sound almost eclipsed by the ring of swords being drawn from their scabbards as Aegon finds himself and Daenerys forced away and surrounded by guards. He cranes his head to see over their shoulders as the corpse struggles ineffectually against the ropes and ropes of chains that bind it.

"It's held tight," the black brother pipes up then. "But if it gets loose, know that the only thing that can kill a wright is fire. You can chop it to pieces and the pieces will just keep trying to kill you."

"Seven have mercy," Aegon breathes out in horror, pushing the guardsmen out of his way so that his view is not obstructed. Rolly tries to protest, but Aegon just shakes his head silently to signal the man to stand down. He will not get any closer, but he has to see this...wright with his own eyes.

Eyes… Dear merciful gods, the creature's eyes! They glow an icy blue, like candles set inside shards of sapphire. They are not beautiful though, imagery aside, they are sickening and unnatural. Just the sight is enough to make it feel as if a chill has set into the very marrow of his bones. The face they are set in is wasted and rotted half away, leaving little doubt as to the truth of the creature's former state of death. And yet, despite the advanced rot, the only thing he smells is that awful coldness that first materialized when the coffin lid was removed.

He knows Daenerys has joined him when he feels her nails digging into his arm, but when he looks to her, she seems unaware of her action as she stares in open horror at the ghastly creature.

"Burn it," she gasps, eyes never leaving the corpse and its macabre, though thankfully silent, attempt to escape. Several of the men dash to the walls, retrieving torches or candles, whatever fire they can lay hands on quickest, but Aegon holds up a hand and orders them to halt. Daenerys' head whips around and she stares at him disbelievingly. Instead of answering her, he looks to the black brother standing casually aside, a torch sconce in easy reach, Aegon notes.

"How long will it stay...awake?"

The man looks surprised. "All night, Your Grace. Until the sun comes up."

Aegon bites his tongue and watches the wright, calculating, before nodding decisively and addressing his Queen.

"The Nights Watch has obviously been telling the truth all this time, and these monstrosities—" he gestures to the wright, "—must be destroyed down to the very last. According to the Lord Commander, the wrights have masters beyond the Wall. We must not allow these...Others and their creations to terrorize our Kingdom any longer."

His Queen's eyes have turned to steel by the end, her previous panic replaced with deadly resolve. He takes her hand in his and she squeezes back firmly.

"It is time to take the North back."

* * *

If there are benefits to having a bunch of kowtowing sycophants, it is that they are so _very_ eager to be of use to the "Rightful Targaryen King and Queen" now that he and Dany have sundered their forces with their combined armies and the dragons. When summoned, the Lords and Ladies of the court positively clamored to be the first to arrive in the Throne room despite the late hour. Men and women had poured in, some still in their finery while others looked as though they had hastily changed out of their night clothes, but all of them staring with varying degrees of—mostly false—adoration at he and Daenerys as they stood in front of the Iron Throne together.

Once the nobles had caught sight of the Nights Watchman, not exactly a feat considering that the man still stood with his iron coffin before the throne, many of them had smirked; unsure why they'd been called to see the spectacle, but eager to enjoy the show all the same. The moment their gazes were captured by the closed iron coffin, rocking back and forth on the ground behind him, many of them had lost their smug looks and instead begun throwing he and Dany apprehensive expressions.

The shadow of their mad Targaryen ancestors is a hard one to escape, he supposes, and it is something that will never be far from the minds of the people of Westeros.

So, once the stream of their subjects had finally ebbed and he could see all of he and his wife's military commanders were present, Aegon had nodded to the Watchman to begin. The man proceeded to give a considerably more eloquent appeal than his previous attempt, though still addressing his apparent superior only as 'Lord Snow', oddly enough. The moment a pair of guardsmen reluctantly removed the lid of the coffin and exposed the abomination inside was marked by terrified shrieks and a sudden panicked recoil that left dozens of people flailing on the floor.

At the time, he'd noted with some humor, dimmed and overshadowed as it still was by his own horror, that one of the southron lords who always mocked the loudest about Northmen pissing themselves in fright, had himself been sitting in a puddle of his own making. The northern lords were as alarmed as any of their southron counterparts, but it had fast been joined by a pronounced sense of vindicated pride that they hadn't been shy about voicing. Their esteemed lord's son had proven himself before the entire court in King's Landing—all without having ever setting foot any farther south that the Wall itself.

Then had come the hard part; convincing these people to follow him into the North to face an army of these creatures and their terrible masters.

But eventually, months of bellyaching by his men and southron nobles dragging their heels later, the combined might of the Iron Throne marched out from the south and into the heart of the north. Luckily, they make good time once they are on the march proper, the North having been weakened through years of war and long winter so that the entire region is ready to fold at the right pressure.

He has found that a trio of dragons tend to always apply just the right pressure.

By the time the ruins of Winterfell fall to their control and they set up a loyal regent as the interim Warden of the North, the incandescent fury of both Lord Connington and even his wife—whose anger is most often punctuated by the roaring of her dragons above them—has reached previously unfathomed levels. With Jon Snow now absolved of suspicions of being addled minded, the volume and frequency of the northern lords' requests for the legitimization of Eddard Stark's bastard grow with every day, it seems.

While he himself is not against the idea—pending, naturally, a chance to meet the man and take his measure first—his Queen and Lord Hand are as enraged by the suggestion as they've always been. Lord Connington now turns an unhealthy shade of purple every time Jon Snow's name is so much as hinted at. No matter the context. As for Daenerys, well, he thinks he'll have to confine the Stark bastard to his quarters for a while after they arrive just to avoid a hungry dragon "mistaking" him for one of their meals.

The day they arrive at the Wall is actually the _night_ they arrive. As the—breathtakingly impressive, he notes, even when seen only by the light of a half moon—wall of ice looms ahead of them, he is engaged in yet another debate with his livid Hand and a seething Daenerys. Sparked, as many others before, by yet another unsubtle probe, this time from the newest northern lords to join them, as to whether Jon Snow will be released from the Nights Watch. Aegon confesses—to himself alone; he does have his pride—that even he is growing weary of hearing nothing from these men without their conversation starting and ending with the name Jon Snow.

As they absorb one northern house after another back into the broader scope of the Seven Kingdoms, it seems that there hasn't been a single one who, upon learning of their ultimate goal of converging at the Wall, doesn't have a burning desire for a Stark being raised up in Winterfell. Even if that Stark must be released from an oath held sacred here in the North, and even if that Stark must be relieved of the surname 'Snow' before he can _be_ a Stark.

Aegon finds himself almost jealous—certainly House Targaryen does not hold this sort of absolute loyalty from any of the houses of Westeros, much less an entire Providence of noble houses and small folk alike. The Dragons must always fight for the right to rule, must always prove that they still have the mettle to conquer and hold their Kingdom. When they do not, the other houses of Westeros turn on them quickly and try to eat them alive.

And yet, here in the North, it was the northern lords themselves who crowned their four and ten year old lord as King in the North. They spiritedly went to war under the banner of their boy King, and even when Robb Stark blundered and became The King Who Lost the North, still these men want to raise up his brother in his place. Yes, House Stark has its enemies among its own banner men, but even these men are outliers and the sort that everyone knew were treacherous all along. It makes him perhaps believe what people say: that the men of the North, the descendants of the First Men, are a different breed of man from the rest of Westeros.

His Queen and Lord Hand are less sanguine about the matter and tend to look upon the ardent Stark loyalists with, at best, thinly veiled mistrust and even contempt. Lord Connington is particularly guilty of this kind of blind prejudice, still too full of rage over the events of 18 years ago to let it go. It is a trait that, now that Aegon is King, he has felt he must distance himself from, even at the expense of wounding his foster father's feelings.

Aegon simply cannot feel as Jon Connington does, his anger has always been the sort that burns through him as a cleansing fire and does not sit and fester and rot him from the inside out. When his anger is roused, he cannot deny that his temper can be foul indeed, but after it has passed, he finds that he can always think more clearly, the obstacles in his mind having been purified in the fire. He is not vengeful, or the type to nurse old hurts close to his heart, pulling them out in the quiet hours to admire how their sharp edges can make him bleed. It is simply not in his nature.

He is sorry to say that this cannot be said of either his foster father, or his aunt. Daenerys does not have Jon's bitterness, but she does have the bad habit of never letting go of a slight and never forgiving a betrayal. He understands that Dany has lived a hard life. A life of trusting people, only for them to let her down and even at times reveal themselves to have been her enemy all along. Each time her heart has taken such a wound, she has grown more callous, guarding the gentle heart she denies she has all the more fiercely.

Her true problem though, as far as he can tell, is that she is as mesmerized by prophecies as his father is said to have been. While Rhaegar obsessed over the prophecy of the Prince that was Promised, Daenerys relies on a fortune told by a mystery shadow-binder woman she met after the birth of her dragons. Daenerys even admits that the paranoia the woman, Quaithe, she calls her, instilled in her has greatly influenced her decisions over the years. She has never revealed the full contents of Quaithe's warning to him, but sometimes Aegon gets the feeling that there may have been something about him mentioned in it.

There are times when he will catch Daenerys staring at him with an intensity that momentarily startles him as her eyes seem to try to penetrate his soul and take the measure of his worth. Once or twice, he has even experienced a chill go down his spine, wondering if he has failed her mysterious test and she will order her dragons to devour him. Rhaegal will not betray him, he is reasonably certain, but he has no such rapport with the other two as he has developed with the green.

Drogon absolutely would obey his mother's command, and Aegon isn't sure that Rhaegal would come between his brother and the human that he simply allows on his back with minimal fuss. The green _might_ protect him, as it has from human threats in battle, but he has also seen the way Rhaegal and Viserion bow to their brother's superior size and volatile temper. He would prefer not to ever have to test that theory, but Daenerys' attachment to prophecies might prompt her to act irrationally, if indeed she suspects him because of her shadow-binder's words. He would like to think that they have overcome their initial problems with each other and can rule together in a way that they strengthen one another. But sometimes…

He doesn't _think_ he merely imagines her general contentment in their relationship, both as co-rulers and in their marriage. While they have been engaged in a near constant fight for dominance in both, it is hardly a bitter struggle that leaves them feeling resentful. They test one another, pushing limits to see how far their partner will allow themselves to be pushed, but there is a remarkable lack of true animosity present in their interactions. It was harder in the very beginning, their personalities both too strong for either of them to bow to the other, but over their year or so of marriage, they have come to a somewhat comfortable compromise of giving and taking.

As regards to their marriage bed, they do often enjoy sharing a bed, fruitless though they both know the exercise to be. Lovemaking between them is done simply for the pleasure of it, and he assesses that neither of them leave their marriage bed unsatisfied. Although Daenerys has kept her lover Daario Nahris, Aegon has come to the conclusion that her stubbornness regarding the mercenary has more to do with standing her ground, rather than a deep affection for the man.

He plays with the idea of calling her Daenerys the Defiant one day, just to see if she will laugh at the reference, or act defensive and scowl. He thinks he has a good enough read on her by now to hazard a guess that she will react with laughter, appreciating the jest and not taking offense.

But then will come one of those deep, inscrutable stares, and Aegon suddenly is sure of nothing in regards to his wife's true feelings. She is giving him one of those looks right now, as a matter of fact, but he is too caught up in rebutting Connington's frankly ridiculous view of Eddard Stark's _son's_ culpability in the fall of House Targaryen to do more than make note of it.

"I fail to see how your aversion to the man is any better than _Robert Baratheon_ ," he says the name as if pronouncing a vile curse, "deciding that my sister and I were dragonspawn and thus deserved to die. Snow would have been a baby when his father rebelled, my lord. No more guilty of Robert's Rebellion than my sister and I."

Connington recoils, stung to have Aegon compare him to the Usurper, of all people, no doubt, but he swiftly recovers and likely would continue to stubbornly stick to his opinion if Aegon allowed him. He is sick and tired of this repetitious argument playing out _day_ _after_ _day_ until he thinks he will scream if it is brought up one more time.

As it happens though, Aegon is saved from another half hour of ceaseless arguing by the sounds of a battle they have unknowingly stumbled upon in the dark.

A rank of Unsullied march in a protective formation around them and one of Aegon's loyal Golden Company commanders and his men have been given charge of the advance guard, so by the time they arrive at the scene of the action, the fight is well over, though the aftermath is sobering enough. A good dozen or more corpses litter the field, each engulfed in a blaze of fire, while a handful of ragged, black-clad men with torches tend three of the fires.

At first he thinks all the pyres belong to slain wraiths, but then realizes that the bodies the black brothers linger over are actually their own men, freshly dead and not prone to easily burning. The smell of cooking meat draws horrified noises from several of their less battle-tested men and lords, though he cannot say as it does not affect him as well. He is simply too accustomed to wearing a mask of indifference to allow his own revulsion to show.

Aegon can hear when each segment of their men fall silent behind as they ride past the scene until they must seem an army of ghosts approaching the Watch castle. The only sounds are that of the horses clomping noisily through the snowy landscape and the bellows of a secluded few commanders as they lay out orders to the men. All of the idle chitchat and laughter that has followed them thus far is gone, the men nervous about what they will find at the castle proper. A call goes up for torches to be lit, and as the mass of fire doubles, then triples around him, Aegon imagines they must look like a hoard of fireflies from the top of the Wall.

The rest of the ride is somber.

A mood which turns swiftly to horror when they reach Castle Black and find it overrun with dead men. Not merely inert corpses, horrifying as that would have been, but the bodies of slain Nights Watchmen risen from the dead, their eyes glowing blue set in faces not yet rotting. A scattering of men, dressed all in black and wielding swords in one hand and lit torches in the other, fight not on the ground level, but on the meager raised porches and paths of the 'castle'. It becomes evident swiftly that this is in fact the wisest strategy, as it makes the wrights come to them in threes and fours instead of as a monolithic swarm the way the creatures do when they attack the arriving army. It takes several minutes of sheer terror as many of the men forget and must relearn that swords and arrows do nothing to stop the unholy menaces before a strong voice from the direction of the castle yells out that they can only be slain by fire.

Minutes of controlled chaos later, the main yard is free of the creatures except for as merrily burning lumps of flesh on the ground. By the time the creatures are all put to the flame, the surviving black brothers stream down towards the ground at a run. There cannot be more than a dozen of them.

And yet, Aegon realizes, the sounds of fighting continue, and the men of the Nights Watch are dashing towards a tunnel in the ice. Aegon orders the men forward and leaves his wife behind as he maneuvers out of the protective formation to join the onward march to the other side of the Wall. It quickly becomes apparent that this is where the true battle lies, the wrights in the castle yard and in the woods having simply forced their way through or slipped past the black brothers during the mayhem.

There must be five dozen—or more—of the undead, and less than half that number of still living Nights Watchmen. Despite this, the black brothers more than hold their own as they move together like a well oiled war machine, methodically taking down the creatures with torches and, oddly enough, gleaming little daggers. They do not use the daggers on the wrights, and suddenly Aegon remembers the black brother in King's Landing telling them of the Others; the White Walkers. While the wrights must be destroyed by fire, their masters can only be killed by dragonglass and dragonsteel.

Aegon had forgotten, though thankfully not before order an excavation of the dragonglass deposits on Dragonstone. The first shipments of daggers and arrowheads, as requested by the black brother, would have left shortly after they themselves, and Aegon abruptly wishes that he had inquired as to the availability of these items. If these men feel most comfortable while facing an army of creatures double their own only if they have a tiny dragonglass dagger in hand, then there must be—

There.

 _Dear gods..._

Suddenly, as if a fog has overtaken his sight, he barely sees the wrights, his attention caught by a trio of tall pale figures that glide across the battlefield, striking down men with preternatural ease, gleaming swords of something like ice cutting through the air in their wake.

A ragged cheer goes through the Nights Watchmen when they catch sight of the Targaryen army, but the White Walkers are not intimidated. The creatures turn to advance on Aegon's men, who quickly begin to cry out in horror as their swords shatter like brittle glass rather than parrying the icy blades. His men fall, only to stand again moments later, their eyes glowing blue like the wrights as they turn on their comrades. He begins to panic.

 _We have precious little Valyrian steel and no dragonglass,_ his mind reels. _I wield Blackfyre, but my men have no way of killing these 'll all_ _be slaughtered!_

He curses himself as a reckless fool for leading his men into this battle without properly outfitting them for their foe, but before he can come up with a better idea than a strategic—cowardly, his men will say, and he dreads that they could be right—retreat, a massive wolf, pure white but for its startling crimson eyes, flies out of the assembly of black brothers and takes one of the figures down. A man bursts out after the wolf, a longsword in hand rather than a torch and dagger, and he swiftly stabs the Other, causing the creature to melt away before their eyes.

Aegon experiences a fleeting taste of relief at this evidence that a normal blade somehow _can_ slay the creatures, but then realizes, as his men continue to engage the other two nightmarish figures and continue to be slain as easily as untried green boys, that the man's blade is in fact not normal at all, but one of Valyrian steel.

It is complete, utter pandemonium, and Aegon sees that the only way to end it is to destroy the pale beings before they can...turn anymore of his men. So he spurs his terrified horse forward, Blackfyre drawn and ready in his hand, and rides towards one of the White Walkers. He changes his course towards the third creature once he sees the dark-haired man from before engage the one he had originally picked out, and ends up being able to intercept a killing stroke meant for one of his men with Blackfyre. The being, standing nearly as tall as Aegon sits upon his horse, wheels around in seeming surprise at finding another opponent who can match its blade.

Aegon, meanwhile, is thanking the Seven that his gamble paid off. Blackfyre can match their cruelly gleaming ice-swords, now it just remains to be seen if _he_ can match the White Walkers themselves.

The creature is _fast_ , faster than any opponent Aegon has ever fought before and stronger than its tall, thin frame would suggest. It is all he can do to keep from being run through himself, and his poor, terrified horse is almost more a hindrance than a help as the beast shies away from the White Walker, nearly making him miss a parry when it dances nervously away.

I _have to get off this horse before the damn thing gets me killed_ , he thinks, heart pounding.

Easier said than done, he realizes as the White Walker chases after him as his horse attempts to escape. Trained and battle-tested warhorse or not, the beast refuses to come close to the Other and finally it just ignores Aegon's struggles to guide it and turns to run.

His back is completely exposed.

He just manages to throw himself from the saddle before he hears the agonized screaming of his horse as the White Walker's icy blade slices into its flank. He rolls to his feet and scrambles to right himself and find Blackfyre as the wright's pale master glides around the writhing horse, completely composed except for a terrible smile beginning to pull at its bloodless lips. He spots his sword laying abandoned on the ground halfway between he and the White Walker. Without the sword, he knows he will not survive, but there also is a distinct possibility that he will not be able to so much as lay hands on the sword before the White Walker reaches him.

He will just have to chance it.

He steels himself and dashes forward into the jaws of death, hoping that luck and the Seven will be on his side so as to allow him to dodge its teeth.

But it isn't the Seven who save him.

It is a tattered black cloak.

The White Walker snarls, one long fingered hand coming up to snatch at the heavy cloth that has somehow ended up over its head, quite effectively blinding it, and Aegon seizes the opportunity to take up his fallen sword and drive it unflinchingly straight into the creature's heart.

It isn't like killing a man, Blackfyre's blade seeming to suffer no resistance at all as it slides through the frozen flesh as easily as a hot knife through butter. The creature stiffens for but a moment before it simply dissolves into watery sludge that pours down Blackfyre's blade and is so cold that Aegon thinks his hands may be in danger of frostbite where the stuff soaks into his gauntlets.

He startles badly when a man that he hadn't seen approach him seems to simply materialize beside him and reaches down to take the black cloak. The man shakes the sopping cloak out briefly, but swiftly seems to give it up as a lost cause and ends up throwing it back to the ground with a sound of disgust. When he turns, Aegon is arrested by a pair of dark eyes that pass over him curiously before the man gives a slight nod of acknowledgment and leaves as quickly as he appeared. It would be too dark to follow his progress except for the fact that the white wolf from before veritably glows in the moonlight as it trots obediently alongside him, and after a moment, even the wolf disappears into the throng of bodies.

With the only White Walkers in evidence now destroyed, the tide of battle turns without the foul creatures there to swell the ranks of their dead thralls. All the same, by the time they are finished, Aegon's hands _ache_ with the cold, though thankfully the frostbitten sensation has abated and he has hope that he will not need a maester to look at them.

His own horse dead and put to the flame, Aegon confiscates another horse for the trip back through the ice tunnel as he returns to Daenerys' side. His wife notices the change of horse and his disheveled appearance with a delicately raised brow but asks no questions, for which he is grateful.

He sees the dark-eyed man again, the giant wolf at his side a dead giveaway as he trudges back through the gate, one of the last men through before the portcullis creaks ominously and slams closed. He stands apart from the rest, boldly approaching them while paying no mind at all to the burning corpses around his feet.

 _Ah, my valiant rescuer_ , Aegon thinks wryly.

Now that Aegon can actually see him properly with better light than that of the moon, he notes that he is tall, with a head of dark curls that fall long around his handsome, if scarred, face. Once he is closer, the long face and gray eyes are all the further physical evidence that Aegon needs to have a good guess as to who exactly this man is.

Eddard Stark's bastard comes right up to Aegon and Daenerys where they still sit astride their horses, their features and crowns no doubt informing him of their identities as easily as Aegon was able to guess his. Even by only the faint light of the moon and flickering torches, Aegon can see the grim cast to the Northerner's face, as if internally steeling himself for a duty he finds particularly unpleasant. When he falls to one knee and bows his head, the frown makes a little more sense.

"Welcome, Your Grace," Jon Snow says tersely, shoulders tense as if waiting for an axe to fall on his head.

Aegon, meanwhile, feels his blood stir at the sight—along with something _else_ , as he is greatly startled to note—and it is left to Daenerys to reply to the man's begrudging salutation as Aegon processes the...unexpected effect the man has on him. As it is, he can do little more than stare mutely at the dark-haired man.

 _What is wrong with me?_ He asks himself, unsettled by his body's powerful reaction to the younger man, and all of a sudden actually glad for his cumbersomely thick clothes and the heavy cloak that his body all but vanishes under. He barely hears Daenerys' response or Jon Snow's inviting them inside to speak in the castle's great hall.

Dismounting without cluing in anyone in regards to the condition that seeing the handsome Northerner on his knees with that pouting mouth twisted downwards has left him in is an uncomfortable experience, and one he can honestly say is a new one for him. His body simply _doesn't_ spring sudden, unexplained arousals just because a pretty face kneels in his presence—he shudders to think how embarrassingly his coronation would have gone if it did.

Focusing instead on his lingering annoyance for the man's insulting 'rescue', Aegon is able to will away the reaction with enough success to trust that he'll not end up embarrassing himself in public. With that in mind, he speeds up, outstripping Daenerys for the moment to fall into step with the gray-eyed Northman.

"I didn't need your help," he says, even though in his mind he's calling himself a terrible liar. "I could more than handle the White Walker without you intruding."

The man side-eyes him with those dark eyes, blankly but for a trace of scorn he can just detect in them. His cock stirs again— _Dammit, what is going on?_ —but he also bristles in offense. Before he can say anything though, the man speaks, his voice hard and brittle.

"When you fight the Others, forget any notions you have of honorable battle," he says, eyes narrow. "There's no glory in death by the hand of an Other. There is no honor in being enslaved and turned on your comrades. They don't just kill you—they kill you and turn you to their cause. So you kill them first, and you kill them fast, by whatever means necessary, and with whatever _dirty trick_ will do it."

There is outright contempt in his voice by the end, but Aegon finds that he is no longer offended. This man is a survivor, he sees now. This man has learned the hard way not to let "notions of honor" get in the way of his mission or his survival.

"Well said," Aegon acknowledges with a nod. The other appears surprised by his easy acquiescence, but buries it quickly and turns his head away so that his dark hair blocks Aegon's view of his eyes.

Daenerys comes up beside him then, hooking her arm through his and giving him a curious look, to which he shakes his head faintly. She doesn't look particularly appeased; she is used to getting things her own way and having people jump to answer her every query. But while she may be Queen, Aegon is also the King. He does not bow to her every whim, nor she to his, and so instead of demanding an answer, she lets it go with just a displeased frown.

It is inside the Keep, sitting at a long table across from Jon Snow as he explains everything he knows of the White Walkers, that Aegon has the sudden and entirely inappropriate thought that he is indeed the son of Rhaegar Targaryen. For why else would this Stark, bastard or no, light a fire in his blood so thoroughly that even as he describes horrors the likes of which Aegon has scarcely dreamed of, his trousers feel like torture and he has trouble focusing on anything but the movement of Snow's pale pink lips.

 _Oh, come on!_ He snarls to himself. _He's not_ that _attractive! His squire's prettier and less scarred on top of it. Get a grip, Aegon!_

Meanwhile, Snow says nothing of the delay, and instead is all business, explaining everything that has happened to this point and describing the masters of the awful shambling dead. For all his dourness, Aegon can tell that Eddard Stark's bastard son is actually profusely grateful for the aid and makes an effort to welcome them as graciously as he imagines the man can manage with so few of his men alive.

Steel-gray eyes flicker to meet his own indigo throughout, the action seemingly independent of their owner's control, and Snow's eyes widen almost imperceptibly as he catches Aegon staring at his mouth. Snow's speech stumbles momentarily, and once he recaptures his train of thought, his eyes stick unerringly to Daenerys alone seemingly by sheer force of will alone. Aegon thinks he sees that pale complexion redden some, but it may just be a trick of the dim lights and his own imagination. But no, Snow's sudden need to hide his face in his long hair as he "thinks" cannot be mere coincidence.

 _Well, well. Maybe I'm not the only one losing my mind here._

When their discussion is finished, Aegon having missed most of it, they all stand and Jon Snow, his bottom lip red from being bitten repeatedly, offers the King and Queen quarters in the King's Tower. His chambers, if Aegon is not mistaken. For while Snow indeed still has not introduced himself as Lord Commander, and seems to hold himself largely apart from the rest of the black brothers, there is no other man that appears to hold the position.

 _Curious,_ he muses, rounding the table to follow the man's lead.

Daenerys declines the shared chambers, choosing instead to keep a separate, rather smaller set, where no doubt, her lover Daario Nahris will join her shortly. Aegon is not bothered. He knows that she is barren and there will be neither bastards nor trueborn children from her side of the bed chamber. He prefers to have her content rather than faithful and disgruntled by having her affairs cut short.

Besides, he has himself been struck by a most delightful itch. One that he fully intends to scratch.

Despite his—rather blown out of proportion, he freely admits—reputation when it comes to women, Aegon has had men before, he's simply much more discreet about bedding them than he is with women. There exists a certain stigma in Westeros where 'sword swallowers' are concerned, and Aegon has no desire to add that particular headache to his load when he already has quite enough as it is just with the running of his kingdom and keeping his wife content. But he enjoys men just as much as, and sometimes even more than, he does women.

Women can become very, very attached, even when they swear they will not, and of course, with women, he has to worry about fathering bastards. Men tend to be better at separating their feelings from the act, and ergo, rather less likely to start tearfully declaring their everlasting love and running away nosily sobbing when they are rejected. And, naturally, a thickening waistline on one of his former _male_ lovers does not make him nearly break out in hives. Overall, if not for the stigma, he is of the opinion that a man makes a better paramour for a King than a woman. Certainly a much less complicated one.

Which is why, when Snow tries to back out of the room after surrendering the key, Aegon shakes his head and waves him further in with a lazy twist of his hand.

"No, no, Lord Commander. Stay awhile. I insist."

Snow closes the door, but remains stubbornly where he is. "I'm not Lord Commander anymore," he says, expression wary. "I was...mutinied against almost a year ago."

"And yet, you live? And you still keep these chambers? Quite unusual for a man that has been ousted from his command." Aegon replies dubiously as he sits in one of the two chairs by the fireplace. The fire is already merrily crackling in the hearth and must have been for some time with how warm the room is despite the temperature outdoors. Aegon gratefully strips the gloves from his hands and shrugs his heavy cloak off to drape over the back of the chair.

Once he is comfortable, he leans back to watch Jon Snow's reactions carefully. Beyond merely unusual, it is almost unheard of for men to mutiny only to leave the man they've mutinied against alive and still in possession of many of the trappings of his old position of power. Just what is Jon Snow trying to pull with such a bizarre story?

"There were extenuating circumstances afterward, Your Grace," Snow answers, expression going abruptly flat and his tone on edge. He looks ready to leave, hand groping the door handle restlessly. "Will that be all, Your Grace?"

"No," Aegon replies a little sharply with brows raised. "I believe I asked you to stay. So stay, _Lord Snow_."

Gray eyes flash at the mockingly pronounced title, and Snow's pretty mouth pinches into a scowl. But the man does reluctantly let go of the handle and finally obliges Aegon by coming fully into the room. At a gesture from Aegon, the man takes a seat in the other chair, muscles clearly tense, even through all the leather of his armor. He stares resolutely into the fire, his hands remaining clenched in the fabric of his trousers.

Aegon hides his smile at the hint of petulance and instead takes the opportunity to openly appreciate the view while the Stark bastard ignores him. He really is quite attractive, scars aside, and his glowering only makes Aegon want to put the sullen bastard on his knees and fuck his pouting mouth all the more.

"I admit I'm curious," he says, running his tongue over his bottom lip and catching the other man's unwilling attention. The action holds Snow's eyes only until they flick up and notice Aegon watching him back, after which, the man whips his gaze back to the fire. Aegon smirks and continues speaking.

"So tell me about these...'extenuating circumstances', Lord Snow. How did you survive this mutiny? Did they decide you were too pretty to kill in the end? Afterward, did they regret their rebellion and grovel at your feet, asking you to forgive and forget?"

To his own faint amusement, the lingering edge of mocking in his voice appears to greatly nettle Snow; his gloved hands clenching into fists on his knees, heedless of the thick cloth of his trousers threatening to tear in his hands. He remains obstinately silent though, even as Aegon can see the fury flash in the single visible gray eye.

 _Oh? Struck a nerve there did I, Lord Snow?_

He supposes it wouldn't be out of character for the infamous murderers and rapers of the Nights Watch to turn on their pretty commander and rape him rather than kill him. It's disappointing, all the same, even if only because now he's rather sure that seducing the man will get him absolutely nowhere.

Snow shows signs of a reciprocal attraction, yes, but a man that's been violently gang raped is unlikely to be open to following through on such an enticement as a casual tumble with another man. Especially as it appears that Snow still holds great indignation in his heart over the vile circumstance. And Aegon has never been the type to just demand 'royal privilege' and essentially rape the man himself.

 _What a shame_ , he sighs to himself. Goal ruined, he is ready to dismiss the dark-haired bastard—and consequently spend a miserable night alone but for his left hand—when the man speaks.

"It wasn't like that," he bites out, "They did kill me—I have the marks to prove it. I laid dead for two days before the Red Priestess resurrected me."

Dead. For two days.

Red Priestess.

Resurrected.

 _...What?_

"What?"

He realizes that he has echoed his last thought aloud only when he hears his own voice, horrified and incredulous all at once. His erection is gone as gone can be, thankfully, but otherwise he's aware that he probably still isn't the image of kingly dignity with his mouth hanging wide open and his eyes huge with shock.

Snow shrugs. "Her powers are potent—it's her visions you can't trust."

Aegon isn't sure _what_ to say to that baffling statement and so he ignores it in favor of something else the man said.

"And you have marks still, you say?" Aegon asks as he tries to wrap his mind around it. Snow nods and so Aegon says, "Show me."

It is nothing less than a command, and by Jon Snow's startled look and flushing face, he knows it. "Show me," he repeats, standing and gesturing impatiently for Snow to follow suit, which Snow does after several seconds of hesitation. Gray eyes meet his, the man perhaps gauging how serious he is, but once discovering that the answer is 'completely serious', he begins loosening the buckles of his leathers and shucks them into the chair.

Underneath, Snow wears only a quilted doublet, abominably thin by Aegon's standards for such weather, but then again, this has been Jon Snow's home for years. Perhaps he no longer feels the cold. Gloved fingers stall on the carved-bone buttons, and so Aegon reaches out and undoes them himself. Snow's breath hitches and he can see him staring at him through apprehensive eyes, but Aegon simply finishes the last one and tugs the tunic open.

Incongruous with the otherwise somber mood, the first thought that comes to Aegon's mind is to wonder if Jon Snow has ever heard of the concept of _blocking_. To say he has never seen so many scars in his life would be a ridiculous claim, though he is fairly certain that he can say he's never seen so many on someone so young.

A number of silvery pink lines litter the pale skin, most of them small, the size of daggers of varying sizes, though a few are wider, nearly an inch and a half wide. Aegon can tell the difference between the wounds caused by a slashing sword, and those caused by straight out stabbing. These are mostly of the latter; the wounds showing signs of a blade having punctured the flesh, only to be torn harshly from it. Several are clustered around his belly, and must have pierced any number of vital organs there. But Aegon spies another, larger wound further up his chest and pushes the shirt off Snow's shoulders entirely to better see. He cannot help his loud inhale through his clenched teeth.

Larger than the others, and all the more gruesome for it, someone evidently stabbed Jon Snow right over his heart—and then twisted the blade as they ripped it out. A mortal wound even without the others.

"Gods be good..." Aegon says with breathless dismay.

His hand seems to move of its own accord, and when Jon Snow gasps in response to Aegon's bare hand covering the terrible scar, Aegon thinks he is just as surprised by his actions as Snow. His eyes are only for the pale canvas of scarred flesh, but he can feel the Stark bastard shiver, his tense muscles trembling under his hand. He feels warm and alive enough to Aegon, but he doesn't doubt the man's story—not with these mementos. And that is what they are; everlasting reminders of a heinous betrayal.

The wounds have healed to thick, rigid puckers of skin that look and feel as if they've had a year to heal, and Aegon wonders with morbid fascination at the...mechanics of Snow's resurrection. They are prominent under his fingers, the ridges easy to follow by touch alone, and he's certain he could make them out even in the pitch dark. That would seem to imply that they took their time healing, at least on the outer, skin-deep level, for surely his punctured heart and organs could not slowly heal without the trauma killing him again—could they? Do the normal rules of nature even apply in such a circumstance where _magic_ has interrupted the natural order?

Strangely—maybe even a little alarmingly so—the plain _unnaturalness_ surrounding Jon Snow's resurrection proves insufficient in cooling his blood for long, and Aegon finds himself audaciously skimming his fingertips down Snow's chest to rest instead on his taunt belly. Ostensibly he is simply interested in touching the rest of Snow's scars, but he doesn't bother lying to himself. It may be depraved of him, but as he imagines mapping these marks out in the dark with his hands while he presses this man back into soft sheets, his arousal makes a demonstrable return.

 _I am on the verge of spending in my trousers like a greenboy over scars—scars!_ He thinks disbelievingly and with not a little self-disgust. _If I didn't know better, I'd think this 'Red Priestess' had put_ me _under an enchantment._

He swallows roughly from the surge of heat that has blossomed in is belly and steps around the man, hand trailing along in his wake and leaving Snow shivering under it. He halts behind him and puts his hands on both lean, muscled hips, right where the swell of a woman's would begin. But Jon Snow is no woman, and instead of the cushioned handholds he is used to with them, he feels only honed muscle padding the slender hips over his bones. It is different, but no less pleasing, and he uses his grip to turn the man until the glow of the fire illuminates his back.

Snow goes easily, not fighting him in the least, though he is still very tense, and Aegon gets the feeling that Snow does not often allow a man to stand so close to his unguarded back. Which, considering what Aegon has just seen, he does not blame him in the least, and actually finds it encouraging that, even with his quite justified reservations, Snow is showing himself willing to be handled with such grace. But the burgeoning smile on his lips quickly dies as he sees straightaway that there are a plethora of scars there as well, maybe half a dozen like the distinctive stab wounds on his front.

"There was a commotion in the yard, and when I went out to try to calm things down, they surrounded me and just started...stabbing me," Snow says in a raspy voice, looking over his shoulder warily like he's worried that Aegon might take it in his mind to put some _more_ there.

In deference to Snow's evident leeriness, Aegon forces himself just to hum thoughtfully and instead thumbs a puckered scar that he recognizes as an arrow wound. A very messy arrow wound.

"Did you remove it yourself?" he asks.

"Remove what, Your Grace?"

Aegon snorts and taps the wound. "The arrow, what else? The scar's quite a mess, like you had to reach over your shoulder and rip it out on your own at a nasty angle."

"Oh. No," Snow laughs and his mouth twists in a humorless smile. "But I did fall off a horse with them still in my back."

Aegon cringes just imagining it, and then, sure enough, sees a second scar of the same type on the other side of Snow's spine.

"She got me again in the leg," Snow says quietly, warming to Aegon's inquiry, perhaps. "And probably would have punched me full of a few more if I hadn't been riding away as fast as I could at the time."

"She?"

Snow hesitates. "One of the wildlings," he admits at last. "I was returning to the Wall after infiltrating the wildling camp and discovering they meant to attack the Wall in force. She caught up to me and tried to kill me."

"Well she certainly made a good attempt at it," Aegon comments, sweeping his fingers back over one of the arrow marks. "If this one had been just a little further to the right, it would have pierced your heart."

Inky curls fall forward, leaving the knob at the top of his spine and his neck exposed when Snow's head bows forward at that. "I know," he whispers lowly. Aegon thinks he sees the way of it now.

"Ah," he says, head nodding as a piece of the puzzle clicks in with the rest. "She was your lover," he continues, just to see Snow's reaction. A flinch.

Aegon has lived surrounded by hardened war veterans for years, their scarred bodies living testaments to both their greatest victories and their most humiliating defeats. Jon Snow's body, on the other hand, seems to be nothing if not a monument to the most painful of betrayals.

Snow refuses to open his lips to either confirm or deny though, and Aegon does not press. Instead he circles back around so that he stands almost chest to chest with the Stark bastard, causing the other man to shift uneasily, but refuse to be the first to back away. Steel and amethyst match and Aegon moves closer so that he must tilt his head slightly in order to not look down his nose at the shorter man. Snow doesn't retreat even as Aegon can see the conflict in his eyes and feel the shakiness of his breath against his own skin.

 _So headstrong, even as you_ _stare down a King_ , Aegon thinks, mostly amused but with an underlying—and growing—hunger. _I wonder how well you'll keep that up while I'm making you scream. Will you glare at me then—or beg me for more? I wouldn't put it past you to do both._

His own resolve falters at the image such thoughts evoke in his mind, and he at last forsakes their battle of wills in favor of a more…pleasurable clash. As it is, he barely has to lean in at all to close the tenuous distance between them to take the other man's lips in a deep kiss.

Snow jolts and gasps into Aegon's mouth, but the King just grabs a handful of the man's hair at the nape of his neck and pulls him in. The dark curls are thick and silky in his fingers, and Aegon can taste the ale that Snow must have drank earlier on his tongue as he plunders that beguiling mouth at last. Snow shudders in his arms and Aegon swallows a moan when he feels an answering hardness against his thigh where he has slipped it between the dark bastard's legs to rub teasingly.

When Snow moans into his mouth and his still gloved hands clutch the front of Aegon's shirt, all he can think of is how he wants to have Snow first; whether he'll get him into the bed first, or just take him on the floor here in front of the fireplace.

But alas, it is simply not meant to be, it seems.

"Wait!" Snow gasps, head jerking back and to the side, heedless of the hold Aegon still has on his hair. "I can't, Your Grace. I just can't."

Breathless and with his mouth red and shiny and just begging to be kissed again, he is unspeakably tempting to Aegon's eyes at that moment. But he is also full on shaking and there is a wild look in his eyes that Aegon is used to seeing in the eyes of men about to bolt in terror out of Rhaegal's path of death and destruction. Reluctantly, he decides to have mercy on his prey and give him some space—not release him entirely, dear gods, no, but at least allow him time to catch his breath and calm himself some.

With that in mind, he uses his hold on Snow's waist to turn him around and maneuver him back into his own seat. It is large enough, he can set his knee between Snow's and bracket the man in with his arms on either side of his head. Snow's eyes are squeezed shut, but his breathing is still fast with panic, so Aegon lightly strokes his fingers over the pale skin soothingly and shushes him like he would a skittish horse.

"There now, deep breaths. Shhh… You're fine, just breathe deep," he murmurs, cheek pressed against one of Snow's so that he can feel the dark-haired man's every quavering breath against his neck. The sensation does nothing to quell his own desire, rather the opposite, really, and he is painfully hard by the time Snow's heartbeat slows. He draws back a little and looks directly into Snow's eyes as long lashes flutter and the gray irises are almost entirely hidden by blown pupils.

"Now tell me," Aegon says huskily, "Why can't you? Do you have a lover? Is it your wildling woman?"

Snow shakes his head slightly in a negative, and so Aegon kisses his mouth once more, almost chastely as compared to before. "Then why?" he persists between soft, closed-mouth kisses.

"I'm not— _kiss_ —attracted— _kiss_ —to men— _kiss_ —your— _kiss_ —grace— _kiss_ —I'm sorry." Snow answers, though contrary to his words, he doesn't try to escape or push Aegon away. Aegon huffs a laugh and smiles into one of his kisses as he lets his hand trail down Snow's naked chest and gently cup the man through his trousers.

" _This_ rather says differently," he whispers against gasping pink lips and massages the thick bulge of Snow's cock through the fabric of his trousers. He is rewarded by the further spreading of the muscular thighs his knee is planted between and a sharp roll of Snow's hips up into his hand. And yet, despite his clear enjoyment, Snow turns away once more with protest.

"Just a—uh!—a...a physical reaction," he pants. "It means nothing. I don't bed men."

"Ever?"

Aegon likes the sound of that, actually, and rewards him with a generous squeeze that makes the man keen.

"Ne—eeverrr. Oooh gods, please, no more. I—I can't..."

"Very well," Aegon sighs and stands up. Snow is obviously surprised by the abrupt stop, and cannot quite stop his hips from bucking up into the disappearing pressure once more. He looks absolutely mortified by his reaction, but Aegon can also detect something like disappointment in his handsome features too. Like he perhaps didn't think his protests would result in the complete removal of all of Aegon's attention at once and now regrets it.

 _You are like to drive me mad, Jon Snow_ , he thinks cheerfully. _But I promise I will return the favor—in full._

"That's it?" Snow asks, as if waiting for the trick. "Just like that?"

Aegon shrugs and pastes on a put upon expression. "That's it," he confirms. "I'd like to bed you, I won't lie. But it's not as if I'm going to _rape_ you if you're truly unwilling."

Jon Snow turns scarlet and looks down into his lap, dark curls obscuring his face.

 _Gotcha._

"I didn't think you were going to..."

"Look at me," Aegon interrupts him sternly. Snow jerks his face back up and Aegon can see the arousal and embarrassment warring on his pretty face. "Look me in the eye," Aegon commands him. "Look me in the eye and tell me that you don't want this. Do that, and I'll apologize for infringing on you so egregiously and then you can leave. I'll never mention this again, or attempt to seduce you. Just look me in the eyes and tell me you're not interested."

A filthy, _filthy_ lie, of course, but if he has Snow figured out as well as he _thinks_ he does, that never has to be revealed. The way the dark-haired Northman has reacted to him so far, he feels reasonably confident that the man protests for the sake of protest. He's a virgin to a man's touch and unsure of his own desires. Though if Aegon had to guess, he'd say it wasn't for lack of trying by his fellows in the Watch. Jon Snow is too pretty not to have been propositioned a dozen times over since he joined.

Which prompts Aegon to wonder how young Snow was when he joined the Nights Watch. He must be around 18 or 19, and yet rose to the rank of Lord Commander several years ago. The thought of a 15 or 16 year old Jon Snow being here, among these men, softer and more innocent, with no scars to mar his looks… Frankly, Aegon is a little suspicious of Snow's claim of both not being raped by his black brothers _and_ never bedding a man.

The steel-colored eyes match his and Snow's mouth opens, but he says nothing and eventually closes it.

 _And now you're mine. You just don't know it yet._

Aegon allows himself to gloat inside—he can almost _taste_ his triumph—but he allows nothing of his inner exultation to show on his face. Snow reacts badly to mockery, he's learned in his short time with the man, and though the last thing in the world Aegon wants to do to Snow right now is _mock_ him, he's not blind to how a smug smirk on his part could be misinterpreted by the man. And so he keeps his face smooth and allows the silence to drag on for several more increasingly uncomfortable seconds. Uncomfortable for Jon Snow, that is. _He_ is greatly enjoying the awkward scene, himself—even if he _can_ taste blood in his mouth from where he's bitten his cheek too hard trying to keep his expression carefully blank.

Just when it seems that Snow has worked up the nerve to say something, Aegon snatches up Snow's discarded tunic and presents it to the man.

"You can go," he dismisses him curtly and revels internally at the taken-aback look that Snow gives him. "I see you're not ready just yet, so think it over and we'll speak again later."

Snow takes his tunic, and when he stands he turns his back to hide the thunderstruck expression that he can't seem to wipe off his face.

It is a gamble, sending him away like this. He could come back the next day, having processed every thing and decided that he really doesn't want to share Aegon's bed. But that being said, Aegon honestly does not foresee that happening. Snow rather strikes him as a man who needs desperately to _let go_. The stresses of power and command have worn the Stark bastard down into the ground and he is very plainly _tired_ of having to be strong and in control. Once he can convince him just to try giving the reins to Aegon, he's certain that the man will learn to crave that sort of release. And Aegon looks forward to being his sole source while he is at the Wall.

Besides, Aegon, contrary to popular opinion, _is_ capable of playing the long game. Somewhat. Not that he intends his seduction of Jon Snow to go on much longer than it absolutely must in order to get the man in bed, but he's not opposed to taking his time and doing a proper job of it. He knows—just _knows,_ in his bones—that he wants more than a single messy tumble with the man.

He feels... _drawn_ to Jon Snow, almost the way he felt drawn to Daenerys when he first met her. With Daenerys he's sure it was the draw of family, helped along by the fact that his aunt's reputation as the most beautiful woman in the world was by no means an exaggeration. But that does not explain why he can hardly keep his hands off this Northern bastard, pretty though he may be under the scars.

And then, with a jolt, it occurs to him to wonder if this is how his father felt when he first saw Lyanna Stark. The famed wolf-maid of the North who drew his father's eye away from his mother, and over whom a war was fought.

That is...a terrifying thought, actually.

But an undeniably thrilling and, dare he say, pleasing one as well.

There have been skeptical whispers about Aegon ever since they first made landfall in Westeros. Even he has heard them, try as the whisperers have to be subtle, and though he shows nothing—proclaims nothing—but absolute belief in his own bloodline…

Even Aegon has his doubts.

He has wed Daenerys Targaryen, thus solidifying his right to rule and reunifying his sundered house, but though he sits otherwise uncontested upon the Iron Throne with as beautiful a woman as has ever lived by his side and sharing his bed, his triumph cannot help but be tainted by a single insidious question. Is he truly Aegon VI Targaryen, son of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, or is he, as the rumors that refuse to die away claim, a Blackfyre usurper that has finally stolen the throne?

He isn't _knowingly_ a Blackfyre, this he does know, but then he didn't know he was Aegon VI until Lord Connington told him when he was ten. And Lord Connington himself admits, very grudgingly, that he didn't come into custody of Aegon until he was near five, and had hardly ever seen him at all when he was still a babe in his mother's arms. With such bias and so many holes in his history, Aegon long ago decided that Lord Connington, loyal as he always has been, is not as… reliable a witness as some might think on the matter.

The man is as a father to him more than anything else, and Aegon is reasonably certain that if it were to be revealed that Aegon was in fact nothing more than the son of a Lysene whore, Lord Connington would still fight for Aegon's right to be King. It is a less comfortable feeling than Aegon would have imagined it to be, and it does nothing to quell the nausea that sometimes strikes him when his doubts prey too heavily on his mind.

But this? This instant, burning desire he felt upon meeting the bastard Stark? This is the first real feeling of genuine kinship that he's ever really felt for the man who has only ever been a story to him before. He has been _taught_ to play the harp and sing; _taught_ to be courtly and charming; and _taught_ to fight and hold a lance in the same manner as the larger-than-life spectre in his life that is Rhaegar Targaryen.

Sometimes it feels as if his life and experiences have been carefully manufactured so as to turn him into Rhaegar Targaryen's mirror image. Just the idea shakes his belief and makes him doubt himself. Would he bear _any_ resemblance to his supposed 'father' if he hadn't been carefully molded his whole life to be as much like the man as possible?

 _This_ feels like the answer. _Jon Snow_ feels like the answer—to that question and a hundred others that have plagued him. And judging by Snow's own bewildered reaction, Aegon surmises that such an immediate, visceral attraction is as unusual on his part as it is for Aegon.

Which is precisely why he wants to do this right, even though he's certain he could have him now if he just _pushed_ a little more. But no, he will let Snow stew on his offer and return with his mind clearer and, with any luck, a little more ready to surrender on the morrow.

When Snow finishes redressing, he stops a moment to look upon Aegon once again, his dark eyes wary. It is then that the silver-haired King notices the fine job the other man has done of putting himself back together.

It almost...irks him, he realizes bemusedly as he finds himself frowning at the almost complete lack of evidence that Snow was only minutes ago moaning and thrusting his cock up into Aegon hand. As the other begins to head to the door, Aegon makes a snap decision and catches hold of him. Jon Snow turns startled eyes his way, but does not protest when Aegon pulls him around and crowds in close.

"Just once more," Aegon whispers against his lips, waiting until Snow's lashes flutter closed of their own accord to place a hot, lingering kiss upon them. He keeps his own mouth closed, not wanting to push Snow too much, but kisses him so passionately otherwise that he might as well have. His hands bury in Snow's whirlwind mess of curls and the man's own hands grip Aegon's sides in response. He lines their cock up as best he can—Snow is a little shorter than himself—and while he does no more than that, he can feel the powerful effect that the action has on Snow as the other man shudders again and groans against his mouth.

When he draws back, Snow is as thrown off balance as he was when he'd first begun panicking, and his appearance just as appealing. Nonetheless, Aegon forces himself to let him go rather than shove him up against the nearest wall and finish what he has started like he is dying to. Snow steps back with dazed gray eyes and a crimson flush covering his face. The man unconsciously wets his lips with his tongue, but thankfully for Aegon's ability to control himself he immediately retreats shakily out of the room. He throws Aegon just one more overwhelmed look before the door closes, and afterward Aegon lets his head fall back and groans ruefully.

 _So close! So fucking close!_

He _could_ have spent tonight fucking the handsome Stark bastard, but now instead he's sentenced himself to that same miserable night alone with his hand that he'd bemoaned earlier.

"Dammit!" he swears aloud and then makes himself a promise as he walks to the bed, loosening his laces as he goes.

 _Tomorrow,_ he vows, taking his cock in hand with a moan. _Tomorrow, for sure. He'll either be ready tomorrow or I'll go_ mad _tomorrow. Either way I'll be put out of my misery._

When he spends over his hand just a few minutes later, he is picturing Jon Snow's mortified blush and the way his scarred belly trembled under his hands. His Kingsguard stationed outside can probably hear him as he shouts his completion, but Aegon spares no thought for embarrassment as he lays back, chest heaving and the vision his mind has conjured up still wrecking havoc on his control.

Tomorrow.

* * *

A/N: Oh Aegon, I think you're maybe just a little overly optimistic there. Maybe. We'll see. (^.^)

Now, now, put those knives down everyone, I promise it isn't over yet. You will get your smut, and lots of it.

* This doesn't seem to actually be necessarily true, as several times in ASoIaF, the wrights remain dead instead of rising. Like the ones Jon put in the ice cells and wanted to study when they rose at night. Only they never did, for some reason. But I wanted some dramatic way for Jon to lose his patience and convince the new King and Queen to get their butts and their dragons to the Wall.


	2. Chapter 2 - Resisting Gravity

A/N: I have a strange mix of show-verse and book-verse details all muddled together. I blame it on the fact that I watched the show _a lot_ more recently than I've read the books, and it is easier to look up and reference scenes from the show's version of things. (Such as how many times Ygritte shot Jon, and where.) In other aspects, it is because I don't even want to try to guess what GRRM is planning to do in his next book, and I'd just as soon follow the show's lead as to what happens to many of the characters. (Tyrion Lannister, for instance) _¯\\_(_ _ツ_ _)_/¯_

* * *

When the door to his former quarters snicks safely closed behind him, it is only because he is only too aware of the knowing eyes of the Kingsguard knights outside that keeps Jon from allowing a loud exhale of relief. The scandalous picture he no doubt makes with his blushing face and kiss-bruised mouth after leaving the King's chamber is one of a distinct nature, he's sure. And not only that, he has a nagging suspicion that was exactly what the King intended with his 'just once more' kiss.

He waits until he turns a corner and is out of the view of the two knights, and then he leans back against the icy stone, letting the frigid cold seep into his back and cool his blood.

 _Gods, the nerve of that wretched man!_ He seethes, the hot flush of arousal on his face giving way to a deeper red of humiliation. _I should have punched him right in his smug mouth, except his Kingsguard would have probably executed me for it._

After waiting several moments to calm himself, he scrapes what is left of his dignity together and retreats to the secluded room that Satin has managed to procure for him—probably by forcibly kicking the former occupants out—in the time since Jon surrendered his own quarters in the King's Tower to the visiting royals. Satin has always been an efficient worker, and Jon is thankful to still have the man's loyalty even after he made it clear that he no longer considered himself part of the Watch.

Some of the men had grumbled, but as far as Jon is concerned, his death more than paid his ransom to the Nights Watch. He was free from the moment that their blades slid into his flesh with the intent to murder him. The fact that Melisandre was available and willing to resurrect him does not absolve them or mean that he must pretend that it never happened and continue to play along to their tune.

Satin understood, though Jon could tell that it grieved the man all the same, and thus Jon had still been surprised when Satin Flowers had come to him and pledged his loyalty to him again, just as Jon Snow, not the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch. Hence, Satin has continued to act as his steward and squire, turning himself willfully deaf to the complaints of the black brothers. Jon is just glad to still have one ally that he can put his trust in at the Wall with Sam still forging his maester's chain in Oldtown. Though in the beginning it had been difficult to trust even Satin.

For a long time, he'd thought that he would never trust another man again, but slowly it had become evident, even to his hyper-alert and always on guard new state of mind, that there were still good men at the Wall. Good men that hadn't played a part or even known about the plot to murder him until after he was a cold corpse they discovered laying in the yard. Slowly Jon had relearned the ability to give someone his back and not carry naked steel at all times. He learned to sleep again without the need for a dagger under his pillow, his fingers curled around the handle so that he could defend himself even coming out of a dead sleep.

He has apparently progressed so far as to allow that pompous silver-haired prick to manhandle him without feeling the need to bash his head in—even when the man had touched the stab marks and left his sight to gawk at his back. It was an unexpected test of his ability to trust a stranger, but it seems that he has passed. He would love to know _why_ exactly King Aegon chose him as his target instead of someone like Satin, but he supposes that he's...relieved as well.

 _Because I don't have to defend someone else from him._ _I couldn't just let him take advantage of Satin,_ _at least_ _, even if he is the bloody King of the Seven Kingdoms. This way, I'm the only one in any danger if the man turns out to be a monster. That is, if he doesn't simply decide to find an easier quarry when I keep refusing him._

And Jon will refuse him. Whatever the arrogant man thinks, Jon is not attracted to men, he never has been, and he never will be. He has gotten enough offers over the years, offers to 'warm him up' and 'teach him to use his _pretty_ mouth'—gods, he hates when men call him 'pretty'. There are few things so demeaning.

He's under no illusion as to what would have happened to him when he was younger if he hadn't had Ghost. Once it became apparent that his uncle was outright missing, most of Jon's protection disappeared along with him, and without Ghost constantly at his side, someone would have eventually not taken 'no' for an answer. The time between his returning to the Watch after infiltrating the wildlings and Ghost finally showing up as well had been somewhat harrowing. He was considered to be a traitor by more than one of his former...admirers, and Jon had dreaded the day when one or more of those men got him somewhere alone and decided that a traitor didn't deserve to say 'no'.

Even after he became Lord Commander, men still tried to bed him, they were just—slightly—more respectful when asking. But since his death, no one has had the stones to approach him and try to flirt with him.

Until now.

 _What game is he playing at? Why me?_ Jon ponders as he lays on the lumpy mattress in his new room.

 _And w_ _hy send me away instead of insisting that I let him bed me?_ _I know he wanted to, or at least it certainly_ seemed _like he wanted to._ _He was plenty repulsed by the_ _whole resurrection thing_ _, but_ _he also_ _seemed to get over that quickly enough._ _I_ _wonder if it is just because I'm the only person with blood of the Starks he can get his hands on_ _to_ _disgrace_.

It isn't a pleasant thought, and Jon rolls over onto his side, feeling a bit ill. He wishes he'd thought to ask for some dreamwine to help him sleep, but that would have meant seeing more people as he looked for Satin.

He has been blamed and scorned for his father's actions plenty of times in the past, but someone wanting to attack him in so intimate a fashion just because he is Lord Stark's bastard is a new one even for him. Maester Aemon hadn't held his relation to Eddard Stark against him, but then again, Maester Aemon hadn't lived his entire life in exile, never knowing his family because they'd been butchered when he was just a baby. The Dragon King had.

Still, it strikes Jon as a very odd way to revenge oneself upon a dead man. Why not just kill him? Exterminate the last of Eddard Stark's blood and be done with it?

Unless that is precisely the plan…after King Aegon feels that he has sufficiently shamed and dishonored him first.

 _Gods, why couldn't Stannis have lived to take the throne? Why did it have to be a pair of mad Targaryens with dragons? Hopefully, the dragons will at least be an asset in the fight against the Others._

He has heard...mixed reports as to how tractable the Targaryens' dragons are; from stories of courtiers accidentally slain and eaten, to tales of dragonfire unleashed out of the blue on the ranks of Targaryen allies because the dragons could not tell friend from foe. They say that the King and Queen each ride their own dragon, but that the third still flies wild in combat on its own and the royals must spend half their time in the air just keeping the riderless dragon under control.

Jon cannot fathom Ghost acting like an insane berserker that Jon had no control over in battle, the direwolf killing and maiming Jon's own men. No one would put up with it, and Jon would be quickly overwhelmed by calls to slay the wild creature. But who would have the guts to stand up to a King and Queen and demand that they put down their mad dragon?

 _Absolutely no one_ , he thinks dourly.

Jon finally gives up on sleep with an aggravated sigh, conceding that his mind is simply too engaged to manage it, and he instead closes his eyes and sets himself to a different pursuit.

He slips into Ghost's head easily, finding the direwolf laying before a hearth in the kitchen and scaring the daylights out of a pair of cooks with his begging stare. The men are unfamiliar to him, and must have just arrived with the Targaryens, thus explaining their alarm over Ghost's presence, despite the direwolf behaving himself other than his shameful begging. Jon laughs to himself and nudges the direwolf away with thoughts of a hunt. The cooks let out audible sighs of relief behind him and quickly begin squabbling over what to prepare for the nobility to break their fasts in such a short amount of time.

Ghost pads out of the Keep, newcomers to the Wall easily identified by the way they leap out of his way with curses and cries of alarm. He looks up at the King's Tower and catches sight of the Queen as she stands framed by the large window of her room, resplendent even while smothered in such thick furs. Ghost's excellent eyesight allows him to see that a Tyroshi man with dyed blue hair stands behind her, his big hands on her petite shoulders.

When she turns and kisses the man, Jon is so surprised, even Ghost's jaw drops, effectively petrifying several more people, but Jon is too absorbed in his own shock to take any note of the chaos around him. He hastens Ghost out into the woods, eager to lose himself in the hunt and forget about all of the pair of scandalous Targaryens he is now evidently trapped with at the Wall.

 _What the hells is wrong with these people?!_

It certainly puts a new spin on King Aegon's behavior. Either he is getting back at his Queen for her infidelity, or they neither of them care to keep to their marriage bed.

 _Ugh. Either way, that means that he's chosen me as his next...conquest. And here I thought being called 'pretty' was insulting._

As Ghost goes streaking past the Targaryen army to disappear into the woods, Jon decides then and there that he will get involved in the King and Queen's insane relationship _over his dead body_. And if the King tries to force the issue, Jon will make sure that he is too busy cradling his crushed stones to grope Jon's.

His foul mood translates into an increased aggressiveness in Ghost, and the direwolf snarls as he catches the scent of prey. Nonetheless, it proves a good outlet for him, and sometime after Ghost takes down and savages several plump rabbits and an unfortunate bird that makes the mistake of flying too low, Jon finally is able to drift off to sleep. The remnants of his connection to Ghost leaving him with dreams of blood and racing through the snowy landscape.

By the time he comes awake to the sound of approaching footsteps some time later, he feels well rested despite the night of vicious fighting against not only wights, but several White Walkers. He attributes it to the sheer relief he feels that his calls to Kings Landing have _finally_ been answered. The Wall has not had outside help since Stannis Baratheon died and most of his men disbanded to go slinking back south with their tails between their legs. While the wildlings' numbers have greatly helped, even they cannot compare to the tens of thousands of men that the King of Westeros can field.

As he'd discussed with the Queen upon the Targaryens' arrival—the King having stayed oddly quiet at the time—the castles along the Wall have scarcely enough men to keep them garrisoned, and many have been abandoned completely. Castle Black boasts the most, with not even thirty men by last count. With the previous night's casualties, they are probably closer to twenty five—or lower. The situation at the Wall crossed the line from merely 'desperate' to 'catastrophic' more than a year ago when Val's prediction about poor little Shireen Baratheon came true.

Queen Daenerys graciously agreed to speak more of how to divide the army to better guard the Wall after Jon had time to rest, the woman noticing how close Jon was to simply collapsing after the adrenaline had worn off and he'd been able to sit.

Her King is apparently less observant, unfortunately, and as he sits up with a spine-cracking stretch, Jon mourns that the possibility of sending King Aegon along to one of the other castles is probably too much to hope for.

 _Somehow, I get the feeling that he's not going anywhere_ , he sighs to himself.

Just as his visitor knocks on the door, Jon gets to his feet with his sheathed sword in hand, having put on and relaced his boots hurriedly in an effort to not be caught barefoot should he come under attack.

Regrettably, he expects that it will take _years_ at this rate before he is rid of the restive distrust that has embedded itself deep in his heart. As it is, it feels almost instinctual at this point. Perhaps he will never be fully free from it.

"Jon?" says a clear voice that he is well familiar with, making him relax his stance.

"Come in, Satin," he calls and stands his sword up against the wall as the perfumed young man slips inside with a covered tray and a smile.

"The King and Queen are both in the common hall, milord," Satin says as he sets down a steaming plate and mug. "I swiped this from the kitchens for you in case you wanted to eat before you went to speak to them. I haven't tasted food this good in years, I guess there's something to be said for having cooks from the royal kitchens, hm?"

Jon hums noncommittally, but quickly changes his tune when he bites into a sandwich made of bread still warm from the oven and meat so tender and juicy that Jon thinks he must be hallucinating it. He all but moans at the taste of honest to goodness _saffron_ in the leek and potato soup.

"I know, right?" Satin laughs.

Jon shakes his head in amazement. "Gods, there'll be another mutiny when they try to leave if all the men get a taste of this."

His friend shifts uneasily, despising any reference to mutinies or murders. Jon supposes it isn't particularly kind of him to bring them up in jest, but then again, if _he_ can deal with it, so can everyone else, his friends included.

 _Just keep telling yourself that, bastard,_ a nasty voice sneers in his head. _Maybe someday it'll actually be true._

Hand clenched crushingly tight on the spoon in his hand, Jon grits his teeth and tries to sweep such cynical thoughts from his mind. A distraction. He needs a distraction.

"Have you found out what happened at the gate?" he questions suddenly, seizing on the topic in his desperation for something to take his mind off his own damnable insecurities.

Satin's mouth purses in a frown. "Maybe," he shrugs uncertainly. "No one can say who, but _someone_ opened the gate in the middle of the night."

" _What?!_ "

His friend nods grimly. "Like I said, nobody saw who, but the dead where clamoring around the gate along with a White Walker. They were shooting fire-tipped arrows through the murder holes and trying to aim at the Other with dragonglass arrows, but then suddenly the gate was open."

"A betrayer?"

Surely not. What fool would betray them to the White Walkers when it is clear that the creatures are an anathema to all life. They are not the sort to bribe with gold or promises of power. They kill and then they enslave the dead, simple as that.

Satin shakes his head. "I can't imagine it," he says, mirroring Jon's thoughts. "But I also don't know why someone would open the gate in the first place. If someone had some harebrained scheme they were trying to enact, they certainly aren't admitting to it now—if they're even still alive."

 _So a fool or a betrayer. Just what I need. Another damned mystery._

Jon lets the rest of Satin's chatter wash over him as he eats, the man so used to Jon's silences by this point that he doesn't even wait for a comment to any of his gossip before he is moving onto the next topic. Once the plate is empty—the food is _sinfully_ good after all these years of gamey meat and the plainest of fare—Jon has a good idea of all that has happened in the Keep and the Targaryen camp in the time that he has been sleeping.

How Satin comes by such impressive amounts of gossip has always been a mystery, one that Jon really isn't keen to explore, so he just thanks the dark-eyed man and stacks his dishes back on the tray. Satin picks it up, but instead of leaving like he expects him to, the other stares at him pensively while biting his lip, looking for all the world as if he has a burning question, but isn't sure he should ask. In light of recent events, Jon dreads what it could be.

"What is it, Satin?" he sighs.

"I...noticed something strange earlier, my lord," Satin says hesitantly after another moment.

"Oh?"

Satin wets his lips nervously, but watches his face intently. "It was the King—" _Oh shit._ "—In the hall, he was staring at you like he… Well, like he either wanted to _eat_ you—or like he was fantasizing about tearing your clothes off with his teeth. I—Jon? Are you okay?"

Jon suddenly groans and shakes his head as he buries his face in his hands in despair. No, he isn't okay, he is in fact as far from okay as possible right now!

 _That...that idiot!_ _The entire hall must have seen, and now anyone who might have noticed how long I was in the King's Tower will think I was—_

Think he was what? Kissing the man? Getting undressed by him? Being bedded by him? They'd only be wrong about the last one.

 _Oh gods. My reputation is ruined. There'll be rumors that I'm bedding the King before the day is out._

"—ord! My lord!"

Satin is shaking his shoulder, laughter in his voice.

"My lord, I promise it isn't as bad as you're probably imagining," the young man says chuckling once he sees he has Jon's attention once more. "I've long years of practice in noticing and recognizing such looks, but I doubt almost anyone else saw anything but the King staring broodily and maybe trying to intimidate you. It wasn't so much as outright lust that he was looking at you with as much as—" He waves his hand around as he struggles for the right word. "—a deep...intensity, I guess, might be the best way to describe it. Less like he wanted to tumble you right then and there, and more like...uh..."

"More like him feeling me up while kissing me?" Jon mutters morosely under his breath and winces when Satin's eyes light up.

"Did he do that while you were in the Tower?" Satin asks eagerly. Jon doesn't believe he mistakes the enthusiasm in his voice.

 _Uh… What's going on here?_ He wonders, baffled, mouth opening, but no words emerging.

Satin nods to himself in seeming satisfaction. "I thought so," he says. "You _were_ a while in there, but you also looked pretty angry leaving, so I wasn't sure what to think. Did you not like him then? He's _very_ attractive, but if he's an arsehole, I guess all the looks in the world can't remedy that. Though I thought he seemed pleasant enough—obsessive staring aside, naturally."

"What?" Jon asks with incredulity, wondering if perhaps his friend has suffered a blow to the head that he is unaware of. "Satin, I—I don't like men. At all. I'm sure he's perfectly...pleasant—when he wants to be—but I'm just not attracted to men."

Now it is Satin's turn to look skeptical. "Jon, he wasn't the only one who looked interested in there. I watched you _both_ , and I was almost certain that if he asked, you'd consider it. I've never seen you react to anyone like that. Not even _Val_ , and everyone can tell that you fancy her."

"...Really?" Jon asks warily and is rewarded by a deadpan expression.

"You were _blushing_ , Jon," his friend says with emphasis. "You caught him staring and you started turning pink immediately."

"I've blushed around Val plenty!" Jon defends tartly, and then wants to hit himself for that frankly absurd line of defense.

Still, he fails to see how exactly blushing around the Targaryen King is somehow so much more significant than doing so around Val. The wildling princess is a beauty to rival even the Dragon Queen, and, yes, he has been enamored of her for years, though he has never sought to do anything about it, even firmly turning down a marriage to her in years past. The silver-haired King is a striking man, he cannot deny, but he's also _shameless_ in his display—which is the only reason Jon blushed.

The only reason, yes.

...He's not even fooling _himself_ , he realizes with dismay.

"Yes, when she teases or flirts, you do indeed blush like a maid," Satin agrees, though his tone is pure patronization. " _He_ didn't do anything but look at you though. Although," he grins, "it seems he did more than that once he had you alone."

For several moments, Jon attempts to formulate some sort of effective response to that, but ends up just sputtering inarticulately and, yes, blushing. Satin appears quite satisfied with his results, his mouth tugged into a sly grin.

"I rest my case," he says and turns to go.

Jon stares after him agog before closing his eyes with a groan.

 _If I keep my eyes closed long enough, can I pretend that this was all just a bad dream?_

Shaking his head mournfully, he sweeps such hopeful delusions out of his mind and stands to put on his sword. Their royal guests await, after all, and Jon well remembers how much royals _hate_ being kept waiting.

When he steps outside, he realizes why he feels so well rested. The sun is high in the sky—and on the wrong side of it. More than half the day is already gone, and Jon wonders if perhaps Satin was _sent_ to wake him by an irate King or Queen.

 _F_ _antastic_ , he thinks sardonically. _I'm sure they're both positively thrilled by the wait. On the other hand, maybe I've given them enough time for the Queen to have torn herself from her lover's arms long enough to_ _bed_ _her husband, and now he won't want to bed_ me _. And while I'm thinking of farfetched possibilities, perhaps Val will decide today to become a perfect southron lady, and the Nights King will choose to emulate her example and show up to battle in a_ _delicate pink_ _frock._

He is grumbling audibly by the time that he reaches the common hall, and one of the black brothers gives him an odd look, no doubt having heard something about the Nights King and a 'pink frock' and now wondering _what_ exactly he'd heard wrong. Jon ignores the man and instead makes his way to where he can see the silver-haired couple standing with a tall, redheaded man and—

"Lord Tyrion?" Jon blurts out disbelievingly as he sees the last man, the patchy white and gold hair simply too distinct not to jog his memory. The dwarf turns about to face him fully, and it is only by the grace of long years of serving amongst the winter and battle-maimed men of the Wall that Jon can swallow his horrified gasp. He can feel his eyes widen though, and by the short man's slightly bitter expression, it has been noticed.

"Well, well. Jon Snow. Not as pretty as when I last saw you, but then, I don't really have any room to be talking, do I?" the dwarf lord says, jovial enough in appearance but for the poorly hidden offended pride in his mismatched eyes.

Jon knows this game though, also from years of serving with other such maimed men, and so rather than saying anything ill advised about his ravaged face, or, gods forbid, an apology, he instead says, deadpanned, "No it seems not, my lord… It appears you have put on some rather unappealing weight over the years. Too many lemon cakes, perhaps."

The other three of them look upon him with shock at his rudeness, but it has the desired effect soon enough when Lord Tyrion himself starts laughing uproariously, offense quite forgotten.

"I confess, I had all but forgotten this of you, Jon Snow," the Lannister dwarf says once his laughter dies down some. "But before your weapon of choice tended more toward sullen silence and your wolf. Sharpened your own teeth in the last years, have we?"

Jon bares said teeth in a smile and inclines his head slightly in acknowledgment. When Tyrion smiles back at him, he sees that he is forgiven. He sees also the intrigued looks that the King and Queen trade one another at the quick withdrawal of Lord Tyrion's anger and he can guess that such a thing is almost unheard of by them. But Jon hasn't lived with men who have suffered terribly disfiguring wounds for the last years of his life without learning how to speak to them without making them explode from offense.

Some men wear their disfigurement as a badge of honor—Tormund, comes to mind—while others are so horribly ashamed that they lash out at even the slightest of reference to it—and sometimes even at the _lack_ of acknowledgment. Remembering he and Tyrion's exchanges as a boy, Jon wouldn't at first have thought that Tyrion would be one of the latter. Then he really thinks about what he'd said, not just applied to himself, but what such ready advice had implied about Tyrion, too.

" _Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be used to hurt you."_

Make it your strength so it can never be used to hurt you…

Certainly a good philosophy to live by, in theory, but Jon himself knows just how hard it is to actually _live_ it. He can claim that the word 'bastard' doesn't bother him, but that hardly stops it from stinging _every single time_ someone refers to him as 'the bastard', or 'Honorable Ned Stark's one mistake'.

It is hardly a stretch to believe that Tyrion Lannister has also always been a man who hates that which makes a mockery of him—including his own stature. When Jon was young, he'd assumed because of how proudly Tyrion had proclaimed himself that he was truly not bothered. Looking back on it now, he thinks his younger self a blind fool for not seeing it even after the man's own words told the truth of it.

 _I wonder how many others and their motivations I made such assumptions about when I was too young and stupid to see past my own nose. And how many do I still?_

A comment from the Queen drags him out of his own mind, and he soon finds himself engaged in a discussion about the Wall and its castles with she, the red-haired lord, and Tyrion. The King speaks but rarely and seems to much prefer to peer intently at Jon as he tries to ignore him. He feels a familiar heat suffuse his face, like standing before the forge with the bellows aimed at him. The Queen shoots him a knowing look as she slants her eyes towards her husband, but mercifully she does not say whatever it is that she suspects.

The red-haired lord that Jon has since learned is called Jon Connington, the King's Hand, watches him with undisguised disdain, the sneer never leaving his face if he is looking in Jon's direction. He's not sure what exactly he's done to earn this man's enmity, but it reeks of a grudge long nurtured and jealously guarded; one that has spoiled over the years and tainted everything that it has touched. Really, it is simply _too much_ to have spawned during the time of their short acquaintance—even Alliser Thorne had required _some_ direct antagonizing on Jon's part before he'd wanted to mount Jon's head on a pike.

He also discovers during their talk that the Dragon Queen is actually quite interesting, and would probably be more so if she didn't hold such obvious hatred for the blood in his veins. As it is, he ignores the odd ache in his chest that her hostile stare—heated where Catelyn Stark's was cold—causes for reasons that he cannot fathom.

Where Lord Connington's contempt does nothing but make him both curious and troubled in equal measure, the Queen's has a rather different effect on him. She is barely civil, her words used as knives to flay him if he isn't careful, and yet Jon is having a hard time finding her anything less than…intriguing.

 _She's beautiful, but I'm not overly attracted to her,_ he thinks distractedly, trying not to lose track of the turns the conversation takes, but truthfully more interested in solving this new mystery of his.

 _Satin was right. I'm more attracted to her husband._ He snorts softly to himself as that bizarre realization comes to him. _Now there's something I never thought I'd say._

"Tell me, Lord Commander," Queen Daenerys says, suddenly addressing him after a long lull in his part of the conversation. "How well do you think these White Walkers would stand up to dragonfire? You say they are not susceptible to normal fire, but dragonfire is not like normal flames."

He hesitates, thinking on it, but eventually shrugs. "I could not say for sure, Your Grace, as I've never seen dragonfire myself. But I believe that there is a good chance that it would prove more effective. Valyrian steel, forged with dragonfire, is one of their few weaknesses. And I'm not the Lord Commander any longer, Your Grace," he finishes and immediately feels like kicking himself for, once again, not being able to resist.

One of her delicate silver brows raises. "Oh? Your men still refer to you as 'Lord Commander Snow'. Why is that, if you no longer hold the office?"

 _H_ _ere we go again_ , he winces wearily and notices that the King's attention has been caught as well. _Hopefully the Queen will not react the way her husband did. I don't think I can handle another oversexed royal molesting me today._

"I was deposed a year ago, but the Watch hasn't elected a new Lord Commander since, and so some of the men still call me by that title," he tells her simply.

"Deposed _peacefully_?" she counters skeptically, suspicion heavy in her voice. "When Ser Jorah's father was mutinied against, the black brothers of the Nights Watch murdered him. And yet they left you alive and even still call you by your _supposed_ former title? Doesn't that mean that you've simply been reelected? Or is there a reason you don't want to be held responsible for the Nights Watch?"

He considers just shrugging and leaving it at that, but he also made himself a promise a year ago. A promise that while he would stay at the Wall in order to do what he knew was right—namely, defend the realm from the Others—he would do it separate from the Nights Watch. When they killed him, his Watch ended and his vows no longer applied upon his revival.

He is not a member of the Nights Watch.

He is not one of the black brothers.

Which is exactly what he tells her, and then sits back to watch the explosion with suddenly fatigued eyes.

Her violet eyes turn to slits and her voice comes out as a furious hiss. "Are you admitting, then, to desertion—"

"YOU DARE, YOU TREASONOUS BASTARD—"

Her voice is quickly drown out by the booming of the huge, barrel-chested Lord Jon Connington.

"Lord Connington—" the silver-haired King attempts to interject, but the Lord Hand is too enraged seemingly to even hear his voice. Jon watches as the older lord turns nearly purple in his apoplectic fury, and wonders whether the man will collapse from the sheer strain of his anger.

"—A DESERTER—"

"Enough! Lower your voice, my lord!"

"—SHOULD BE EXECUTED! REMOVE HIS HEAD! KILL THE TRAITOR!"

"LORD CONNINGTON!"

The King apparently has lost his patience, the volume of his voice actually _dwarfing_ his incensed nobleman's and making Jon's ears ring. The red-haired lord gapes at his King, looking for all the world as if he cannot imagine what his liege could possibly be upset with him over. The Dragon Queen, meanwhile, looks approvingly at her husband's reaction, like a cat feasting upon her favorite treat. It isn't hard to guess that she and the red-haired nobleman are most likely enemies, or at least currently feuding.

"My lord, you are making a fool of yourself," King Aegon spits in an undertone that Jon can only just hear because of his proximity to the two men. "You are raving like a madman, demanding we execute a man for desertion when he has clearly not left his post and without so much as asking for an explanation. Now hold your tongue, before you embarrass yourself further."

Turning to the room at large, as well as his Queen, consequently, the King continues in a raised voice, "Let us hear Lord Snow out before we pass judgment on him, shall we? Surely there is no harm in listening first, is there, my Queen?"

The Dragon King's voice leaves no room for arguing, something that, judging by her soured expression, his queen clearly does not appreciate. Just from what he has seen so far, the King and Queen seem to have a highly complicated relationship. As Lord Stark's bastard, Jon never really had the opportunity to observe many highborn couples, usually being shuffled somewhere out of sight before honored guests, if not by Lord Stark's command, then by the frigid stare of his wife.

Before this, the only highborn marriage that he has ever seen up close was that of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn. Theirs was clearly a warm, loving match, and when King Robert came to Winterfell with his disdainful Queen, Jon had been genuinely shocked by the clear animus between the royal pair. In truth, King Aegon and Queen Daenerys' relationship bears little resemblance to either of Jon's only real examples of what shape highborn marriages take. While they both appear to hold respect for one another, their dispositions toward each other can go from hot to cold and then hot again in an instant. And that isn't even touching on the subject of the Queen's apparent lover or the fact that the King has actively tried to seduce _Jon_.

 _It's exhausting just_ watching _these two. All the more reason to keep my distance from their relationship—if the Queen doesn't just demand my head, too._

The silver-haired King returns to his Queen's side, and when he turns back to face Jon, they make an impressive picture of shared power. Neither gives so much as a hint of deference towards the other in the angle of their bodies, both of them facing forward as if they alone stand in judgment, separate from their spouse. There is no indication of there even being a 'weaker' partner, the Queen exuding as much power and authority as her King. Clearly a practiced pose, for all its effectiveness, it is more like standing before a pair of Kings.

 _Daenerys Targaryen is no simpering Queen. Nor is her husband a power-jealous tyrant to try to force her to be._

It reflects well upon both of them, he decides.

"Lord Snow," King Aegon addresses him in a loud, commanding voice. "I presume you have reasons for such a declaration. Please do explain." He gives Jon a significant look at the end, a subtle raising of his silver brows, and Jon would be lying if he said that he isn't surprised by the apparent assistance that the man is extending him. Though why he is going through the mummer's farce of being ignorant of Jon's story is currently unclear. It crosses his mind to question what the man will want from him in return, although, he supposes that based on their earlier interaction, the King might as well have made _that_ abundantly clear.

Determined to not think about whatever it is the Dragon King will want in recompense, Jon takes a deep breath to calm himself. When he lets it out, he is disappointed to note that the action does little to ease the queasy turning of his stomach.

 _Best get it over with_ , he tells himself and thus proceeds to do just that.

When his retelling reaches the circumstance of his murder and its aftermath, he is both astounded and somewhat touched by the sheer number of people who come forward to corroborate his story. Not just Satin and the wildlings like Tormund or Val, all of whom have proven themselves as his most faithful of allies, but also more than a dozen of his former brothers.

"And without a doubt, he was dead?" The Queen presses one man.

He nods grimly. "Without a doubt. He bled out in the yard, a knife still poking out of his back when he was finally brought in."

"Aye," another agrees, "I saw the wounds myself when they stripped him down to sew 'em up. Big, nasty gaping things all over his front _and_ back."

There is uncomfortable shifting among some of the black brothers as more and more of them step forward to lend their voices and their testimony, but Jon is hardly surprised by _that_. Rather the opposite, really, for there are many among the men of the Watch who openly disagree with Jon's declaration of his own release from their lifelong vow of service, and they have been neither quiet, nor always peaceful, in their protests. And yet, now that they might have a chance to betray him once again by banding together and denouncing him before the Targaryen monarchs, so many of them have instead joined in an effort to _help_ him.

It leaves him standing in near open-mouthed awe as men who have made their utter contempt for him well-known, put aside their animosity for his benefit.

Meanwhile, the Targaryens stand grim-faced, the Queen in particular. He would worry but for the fact that she has not once shot one of those narrow-eyed looks in his direction since men began to step forward in his defense. If anything, her eyes when she glances his way are downright benign. The King has of course already heard the whole tale, but even he seems further affected by the numerous accounts by the witnesses.

"Tell us more of Jon Snow's resurrection," the King says with a frown. "How did this Red Priestess do it?"

More anxious shifting, the men darting uncomfortable looks at one another. This part has always unsettled all of them, and Jon cannot blame them. In a time of the dead rising to savage the living, Jon's resurrection had spooked many; wildlings, Stannis' men, and the brothers of the Nights Watch alike.

Satin steps forward.

"It was at his funeral, Your Grace," his friend says. "After he was murdered, his killers just wanted to burn him without ceremony, but there were those of us who wanted to send him off properly. With a proper funeral." He swallows, looking haunted, and Jon feels a rush of gratitude for one of his most loyal friends. It would have been easy for his few friends among the Watch to just melt away into the background after his death as his enemies took power. Instead, they had stood by him, even in death, when ostensibly he had nothing more to offer them in way of favor or protection.

 _Gods, I'd forgotten how much they risked for me._

"We built a funeral pyre in the middle of the yard and laid Jon on it, his sword in hand," the dark-eyed young man recalls, staring at the ground. Jon can see men crane their necks, trying to hear. "Lady Melisandre was there as well. She laid the first torch at his feet and then just stood there, refusing to back away as others added their own."

Satin's head shakes and he furrows his brow. The audience is absolutely captivated by this point, Jon included. His own memories of the event are foggy at best. Just smoke and heat and pain as he'd tried to make sense of the impossible.

"The flames ate part of her dress, she stood so close, watching Jon as the fire consumed him. And then, with no warning at all, I heard a groan and Jon…" He glances back at Jon himself with a curious expression on his face as he continues. "Jon rolled right out of the fire into the snow, completely naked, his clothes burned away, and covered in ash. There was panic; everyone thought he'd come back as a wight, but his eyes weren't glowing, blue or otherwise.

"He was clawing at the wounds on his chest as he writhed, and the Priestess swooped in and started tearing out the stitches that hadn't burned. She prostrated herself afterward and began preaching that Jon was R'hllor's champion." He snorts. "Seeing as she'd been saying the same thing about Stannis Baratheon up until he was killed by the Boltons, none of us put much stock in her raving."

There are chuckles among the men then; everyone at the Wall having become well used to Lady Melisandre's preaching.

Once it is quiet again, Satin licks his lips and looks up resolutely to meet the eyes of the King and Queen. "What _is_ true though, Your Graces," he carries on, gaze unshakable and his voice strong, "Is that Jon rose from the dead that day after being murdered. 'And now his watch is ended'. It's what we say over the bodies of our fallen brothers, and it's what we said over Jon before his funeral. He may have risen from the dead, but that doesn't change the fact that he _was_ dead."

His piece said, Satin's eyes fall back to the ground and he shuffles back into the press of bodies as if suddenly abashed at his own assertiveness. Jon makes sure to catch his eye and mouth a heartfelt 'thank you' to him, earning a shaky smile in return.

The story now told in its entirety, Jon stands alone before the Targaryens and their advisers, awaiting their judgment. Behind the royals, even the red-haired Lord Hand stands silent, grinding his teeth, by the looks of it, while Lord Tyrion merely stares at Jon with an intrigued expression. Jon has a feeling that the Lannister dwarf will be positively bursting with questions after this is over, and he just hopes that someone else can answer them. He finds that he is beyond done with talk of his own murder.

"You were betrayed by those you thought were friends," the Queen murmurs softly at last, breaking the silence, but looking almost lost in her own thoughts before her stunning purple eyes flick back up. "Show us these scars, Lord Snow," she commands, and Jon's mouth drops open as he experiences a feeling of d _éjà vu,_ _recall_ _ing_ _an almost identical incident that occurred only hours previous_.

He does not readily show his scars—to _anyone_ —and so Queen Daenerys' order immediately causes a susurrus of anticipation to spread amongst the men in the common hall. The black brothers are hardly immune to the desire to see what they have only heard about up to now, after all, and all this talk of them has certainly whetted everyone's interest. The only ones of them who have seen his scars are the those who might have come to gawk at his stripped body, or Satin, who had apparently been the one to sew his wounds shut in a curious gesture of respect. He remembers them,because when he'd revived, it was to the stinging sensation of Melisandre ripping each stitch out as his body healed around them.

 _I will get them back for this,_ he swears sullenly as he begins stripping out of his clothes for a second time that day. _I don't know_ how _, but I will._

Once down to just his breeches and boots, he huffs impatiently and turns a slow circle to also highlight the wounds on his back. By the time he turns fully around to face his intended audience, they are all suitably impressed, though the redheaded lord looks as if he has just been forced to swallow excrement.

It is Tyrion who regains his voice first, and it comes to no surprise to Jon that the first thing out of the man's mouth is as irreverent as can be expected from the man who's greatest joy in life seems to be taunting other men into a blood-frenzy.

"It seems I spoke truer than I knew when I said you were less pretty than before, Snow," Tyrion japes. "Here I thought they'd just gotten your face, but now even a bag over your head won't help."

The hall is dead still but for the turning of a hundred pair of eyes to stare first at the dwarf, then at Jon to see his reaction. Jon himself is mute for a long moment as he locks eyes with the smirking little man until somewhere off to the side, someone—it sounds rather like Val—gives an indelicate snort. And just like that, unable to control it, he finds his head tilted back as a helpless peel of laughter escapes him. The sudden sound rings uncomfortably in the hall until others begin to join him, and the hall is filled with laughter as the tension is thoroughly broken.

It seems he can always count on Tyrion Lannister to soundly wreck any moment of solemnity that the man plays any part in—including the part of simple observer. As the laughter dies away, he thinks about responding with a jape of his own, something to continue their earlier exchange, perhaps, but before he can, the Queen speaks.

"We have heard your testimony, and seen your evidence, Jon Snow," her voice cuts in, tone regal, as she arches one of her silver brows until Jon's teeth click shut. She and her husband share a look and he picks up where she has left off.

"In my own name, Aegon VI of House Targaryen, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, we hereby hold you…blameless of the crimes of Oath-breaking and Desertion, Jon Snow, and instead we formally release you from your vows. From this day forward, you are free to leave the Wall—as you are free of the Nights Watch."

 _Am I…dream_ _ing_ _?_ He asks himself faintly.

A great whooping cheer goes up behind him and he jumps like a scalded cat when his former brothers converge on him with congratulations. He only just keeps from drawing Longclaw in his initial alarm, an action that thankfully goes largely unnoticed as seemingly every man in the common hall tries to lay hands on him, as if wanting some of his good luck—ha!—to rub off on them.

"Thank you, Your Graces," he bows to the Dragon King and Queen when the clamor has finally abated, and the men have begun to go merrily about their business again.

The Dragon Queen nods, her manner much kinder than before, but it is her husband that Jon watches most intently. He wants to see if the man will give some hint as to what he expects for this most unexpected and precious gift. For Jon is well aware that he can _say_ that he is not held to his vows until he is blue in the face, but without a royal pardon, once he left the Watch, his only choice would be to sail to the Free Cities. Anywhere in Westeros, he ran the risk of execution if discovered, and his father and Robb have left him a bleak inheritance of their many, many enemies throughout Westeros.

Now though…

 _I am free,_ he thinks numbly. _I am free and my first act as a freed man might well be that of a paid whore._

If it is so, the King gives no such indication with the regal incline of his head, all business now instead, he sees. Jon turns away with the feeling of what ought to be his moment of joy being outlined in tar. (*) He tugs on his clothes mechanically so he can leave, but he barely makes it across the room before his arm is caught, and when he looks, his stomach drops at the sight of the silver-haired King.

 _Here it comes._

But the man just smiles and tilts his head towards the back of the room where it is empty of people. "A word?" he asks. As though it is really a question—or a request.

"Of course, Your Grace," Jon replies, leaden, and goes with him easily.

The King grins. "If I may make a suggestion, Lord Snow," he chuckles. "When you do leave the Wall, don't become a bard. You'll starve within a month."

 _The Hells is he on about?_ He wonders and narrows his eyes at the man.

"I don't understand."

"I mean, what you told me a few hours ago, and what I just heard over there? Seven have mercy, Lord Snow," he rolls his eyes.

"Ah," Jon realizes what exactly the King is complaining about and discreetly rolls his own eyes. "Apologizes, Your Grace, but I'm no mummer."

"Indeed not," the King says, that _smirk_ still on his face, as infuriating as it is attractive. "But you managed fine, and your...friend did quite an excellent job. In the end, there was no other choice but to release you."

"Yes, and I thank you again, Your Grace," Jon says curtly, and then, because he truly has never learned to stop while he's ahead, he asks, "But if you were going to, why not earlier? I'd already told you and showed you once, as you said."

The King shrugs. "Daenerys," he answers simply. "I needed you to convince her as well, and I was confident you could. It would have hurt your cause, more than helped it, if she felt offended by my presuming to do so without consulting her. Now she considers it her own idea—and will defend it all the more so for it."

He grins wickedly then. "And it has the happy coincidence of that takes some suspicion of my…impure motives off me if I ever do manage to get you naked, don't you think?"

 _Ah, I'd wondered when that was going to come up again._

Unfortunately, preparedness does not to stop Jon from turning red, nor to help him think of anything to say that doesn't include inarticulate babble.

Undaunted, the Targaryen King gives him a small, pleased smile and flicks one of Jon's unruly curls with one finger. "Ah," he sighs, sounding so pompously satisfied that Jon wants desperately to hit him. "Much as it pains me, I did make myself a promise earlier," he says, and indeed the man seems genuinely mournful. "And so, Jon Snow, I will see you tomorrow."

It is a promise, not a threat, but Jon can't help the way his breath catches or the thrill that goes down his spine in response.

 _Or perhaps_ because _it is a promise,_ he considers, watching mutely as the man spins on his heel to return to the side of his wife. Jon can see how he effortlessly joins in the conversation cheerily, a marked difference to the two such public conversations that Jon has had around him so far.

He shakes his head disbelievingly and snorts to himself, mercifully finding his head clearer now without the silver-haired prick looming over him. _Get me naked will he?_ _G_ _ods, that man is an entitled ass. As bad as Theon Greyjoy ever was, except now_ I'm _in the roll of the scullery maid whose skirt is being chased._

He rolls his eyes again and slips out of the hall, turning down a dozen or more offers of drink as he goes. Wryly he notes that his status as a pariah to be scorned unless he is handing out battle commands seems to have disappeared without a trace. It will be interesting to see how many 'dear' and 'loyal' friends he now has at the Wall. Friends who were, naturally 'always on his side'.

Ghost meets with him briefly in the yard but only stays long enough to give his gloved hand a lick before moving on. He hears someone give a soft 'oof' as the direwolf apparently barrels into them on his way, and that man reveals himself to be Satin as he calls out to him.

"My lord, wait up!"

He obliges, but wishes he hadn't when the first thing Satin says as he matches his pace is a coy, "Believe me now?"

"Satin," he sighs.

"Okay, okay. I agree, not out here."

 _How about not anywhere?_ He thinks but aloud he simply gestures towards his new quarters and says, "Lead the way."

"So," Satin rounds on him the moment his door is closed behind them. "Are we a little less in denial now?"

"About what exactly?" Jon asks mulishly, and Satin frowns.

"About you desiring him too!"

"He's an entitled prick, Satin," Jon fires back, unimpressed.

"He's a King. Of course he acts entitled," Satin replies, equally unimpressed. "He's also very, very attracted to you, from what I've seen."

Jon bristles. "Just because _he's_ attracted, doesn't mean that _I_ have to sleep with him!"

His friend's brows raise, surprised at how badly Jon reacts. "No," he agrees slowly. "But you know that's not what I'm saying."

"What does it matter, Satin?" Jon growls, exacerbated. "Honestly, why do you care at all?"

"'What does it matter'," Satin repeats disbelievingly. "It matters because you renounced your vows almost a _year_ ago, and yet you have yet you're still going about as if held to an oath of chastity when Val would bed you in a heartbeat if you would give the slightest hint that you were interested. If not her, then one of the other wildling women. And the Seven know that there's any number of men who would be happy to tumble you."

"I didn't renounce my vows so that I could have _sex_!" Jon says indignantly. "I did it because they _stabbed_ me to death!"

He starts pacing in an agitated fashion as well as the confines of the room allow, but there is so little space, that he ends up forcing himself to stop and sit down on the bed. "I stay because the White Walkers are a very real threat and fighting them is the right thing to do. But afterward—if there ever _is_ an afterward—I'm leaving. I can enjoy my freedom then!"

Satin's head bows, his lips pursing, and Jon immediately feels a sting of remorse. It isn't fair to take his frustrations out on Satin like this, especially as the man only wants to help, however unwelcome Jon considers such a _form_ of help. So, reeling in his temper, Jon bites his tongue and tries to calm himself so as to apologize. Before he can though, Satin looks back up, his face deadly serious.

"I understand that, Jon," he says solemnly. "Which is exactly why I think you need to _live_ a little. _Now._ Not in some nebulous future that may never come. What if we all die here? What if the Others cannot _be_ beaten? Don't live what could be your last days waiting to be free and making yourself miserable. Go to bed with the Dragon King—or someone else! Just whatever you do, make the most of it and enjoy living right now, Jon."

"But he—! Satin, the King clearly expects me to just jump in bed with him now that he's released me from the Watch. I don't want to sleep with someone just because they _expect_ me to."

Satin is quiet for a few moments as he chews his lip. "Did he say that?" he asks, a furrow between his brows.

Jon tries to think back on the exact way the King expressed himself.

"Not in so many words," Jon concedes reluctantly. "He did mention that he wanted his wife to be the one to initiate my release from my vows. He said that it would help alleviate suspicion of his having had 'impure' motives when he, and I quote, gets me naked."

His voice is pure scorn at the last, and even Satin startles before he starts laughing. Jon scowls at him.

"Dammit, Satin, this isn't funny," he hisses. "Impure motives, my ass. The man is all but trying to _bribe_ me into bed with him!"

"I think you're reading a _little_ too much into this, Jon." He holds up his hands to stay Jon's outraged response. "I'm not saying he couldn't have given you that impression," he says, trying to sooth Jon's offense.

"I'm just thinking that he maybe gave it by _mistake_. He's very—ah— _confident._ He wants you, but he may very well not know any other way to seduce than a full on frontal assault. But mark me, I _know_ the sort of men who try to blackmail or threaten their way into others' beds, Jon, and that man _isn't_ one of them."

Jon winces at the reminder. Sometimes he forgets that Satin grew up in a brothel his entire life before coming to the Wall, but then he'll say something like that and Jon will feel like a thoughtless heel. Of course Satin would recognize that sort of scum better than Jon would, and he certainly wouldn't encourage Jon to have anything to do with such a man.

He sighs. "All the same, I'm not sure _I_ want to be involved with him. I can already tell he and his wife have some odd…" He waves his hand uncertainly, trying to find the right word before giving up. "I don't even know how to describe it, but I have a feeling that nothing good can come of me being caught in the middle of it."

"I'm not saying you have to choose _him_ ," Satin shrugs blithely. "Like I told you, there are plenty of other options open to you."

"But _you_ think I should lay with him? With the King?"

Satin laughs and says cheekily, "I think you should lay with _someone_ , so why not a handsome King who stares at you like he wants to pin you down and worship you."

Jon turns his face away hoping to hide the shiver he feels at those words. King Aegon's indigo eyes seem to always carry a wicked gleam whenever they are turned on him, it's true, and just the memory is enough to ignite a spark of something hot and almost animalistic in Jon's belly. It is a feeling unlike anything he can recall, and the magnitude of it nearly frightens him. There is something...primal about it, as if his very _blood_ sings at the man's presence.

It is utterly intoxicating, and indeed comes complete with all the symptoms of excessive alcohol consumption—including the part where he wants to crawl off and die somewhere afterward. Thankfully _that_ urge is fueled only by sheer embarrassment, rather than the more familiar feeling of a nauseous hangover. Rather, when he can get away from him, the haze lifts and Jon can think straight again as he reels at his previous behavior. The entire phenomena is a puzzle, one he isn't sure he _wants_ to solve.

"I've never slept with a man," Jon weakly protests, unsure why exactly he is confiding this at all—or why he is even _considering_ it, really.

His friend shrugs again though, unconcerned. "I doubt _he'll_ mind that, but if you want, I can tell you what to expect—"

Jon interrupts emphatically "No!" he half shouts, but quickly flushes and moderates his volume as Satin grins mischievously. "Thank you, but no."

 _Gods, if there is a better way to make this conversation more uncomfortable than it already is, I don't know what it would be._

"Well get some more sleep then, Jon," Satin says, a contented smile on his lips. "The wights and Others won't care a wit about the torrid affair between the Dragon King and the former Lord Commander. They'll still be here to kill us come nightfall, without fail."

Jon snorts. " _You've_ spent too much time with Edd," he says, waving the man goodbye.

When he is gone, Jon lays back on the bed, not bothering to shed his boots as he stares at the ceiling and turns over he and Satin's conversation in his head. His friend has been gently prodding him for months on the issue of his renounced vows and what they mean for him, but Jon is adamant in his decision to never father a bastard. Today is the first time that the prospect of bedding a man has been introduced, and Jon isn't sure he likes the direction the idea turns his thoughts towards.

 _If only he wasn't so unbearably sure of himself. But he thinks he's already won and the only reason he hasn't bedded me yet is because he hasn't chosen to yet!_

He lets out an aggravated sigh and admits that this is hardly a train of thought conducive to sleeping. In fact, the entire day so far have been less than helpful towards such an endeavor. The only reason he managed it earlier, he's certain, is because of how absolutely ragged he has been running himself lately.

Before last night, Longclaw was the only Valyrian steel sword at the Wall, and while the other men allow themselves breaks every few days from the nightly fighting, Jon simply feels too guilty about skipping out to rest. From time to time he has no choice but to take a night for himself to avoid passing out of exhaustion in the middle of the battlefield, but every casualty his men— _not_ his men any longer, he reminds himself firmly—suffer those nights eats at him.

It's ridiculous, of course. Even when he is on the field, men die, but at least when he's there, he knows that he's done everything he can to preserve lives. When the White Walkers join the battle while he isn't there, it leads to some of the most awful mornings of his life. He and Ghost have all but perfected a system to take down the Others together, something that the men take heart in. Thus, it is like a knife in the gut when the casualties are tallied after a battle and he hears that someone he knew was struck down and turned by a White Walker before the men could swarm the creature and manage to kill it with a well placed dragonglass dagger in his stead.

The silent accusing stares of his former brothers burn into his soul, asking 'Where _were_ you?' and 'How could you abandon us?'. The times when his answer is 'sleeping content in my warm bed', or 'eating peacefully in my comfortable rooms', he feels so ashamed that he almost thinks he could die of it.

To make things worse, last night was one such case.

As the later hours of the day dragged on, Jon had been forced to admit that he was fatigued to the point of unconsciousness; his eyes barely able to stay open and his body starting to fumble drunkenly at even the most mediocre of tasks. When he'd bumped into Satin and accidentally made him spill the tray of his dinner and all but ruin a report from the men at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, the man had looked at him, looked at the mess, and then pointed his finger in the direction of Jon's bed in a silent, but unequivocal command.

 _I never did get a look at that letter. It's still on my desk in my quarters. Or rather, the King's quarters now._

Jon scowls as he thunks his head back against the mattress.

 _Can I send Satin? Do I trust the_ King _enough to send Satin?_

"Damn it all," he growls as he judges the answer to in fact be a resounding 'No'.

 _I'll have to go myself,_ he decides and pinches the bridge of his nose. He's starting to get a headache.

Laying in his bed, Jon had bleary witnessed Satin carefully unfold the letter and lay it out on his desk to dry on top of one of Jon's tunics. He'd been out like a light before Satin had finished tidying up, but his sleep hadn't been near deep enough to block out the panicked screaming mere hours later. Stumbling to his feet, he'd pulled on his boots and leathers and grabbed his sword. The sight he'd found outside the tower had been the stuff of nightmares.

As Satin explained, someone—they did not yet know who—had opened the gate in the middle of an attack. The black brothers had managed to bottleneck the incursion of the dead there in the entrance, and even to force the wights back fully past the Wall, but more than a dozen had slipped through. Jon had quickly taken command of the situation, sending men to chase after the wights that had escaped them, and joining the fray outside the gate himself upon hearing of the accompanying White Walkers. There had been six, but that had thankfully been whittled down to half that number by the time the King and his men had ridden in unprepared.

King Aegon was very brave, Jon realizes thinking back on it. The man had been clearly terrified, as any sensible man ought to be, but he'd still engaged the White Walker himself rather than scamper back to the gate when he had seen what the creatures were capable of. The madman had even _charged_ it, completely unarmed in an effort to snatch up his lost sword. Jon has to respect the man for having stones of Valyrian steel for that stunt alone.

"Oh, I give up," he sighs to himself and levers out of bed. He'll have no more sleep this day, it seems. On the contrary, he is almost jittery, still energized from the scene in the common hall—both his formal release from the Watch _and_ his encounter with the King.

 _Should I try to go retrieve my letter?_ He wonders, sucking on his bottom lip.

The King is unlikely to be within at this time—surely he's still hobnobbing in the common hall, right?—but he isn't so sure that the man's Kingsguard will allow him inside, the fact that the room was _his_ until this morning be damned. And even if they do, Jon then runs the risk of the King coming back and finding him inside. An event that would no doubt delight the man.

 _...Maybe I should just go prepare for tonight. If I see him, I'll ask him to send along my letter._

Decided, Jon heads outside and then towards the winch.

His single minded purpose as he considers how best to conserve their scant supply of dragonglass without having to take the fight outside the Wall to the Others is a testament to just how monotonous his years at the Wall have become, weeks and months of daylight boredom divided by a couple of hours of terror each night. It has become so routine, in fact, that he is honestly surprised when his trek is interrupted by the King and Queen.

"Lord Snow!" someone calls out to him. He turns, and is startled to find the Targaryen royals, accompanied by Tyrion Lannister, approaching him.

"Your Grace," he says, bowing his head a little. "I was heading to the top of the Wall. Can I do something for you?"

"Yes, in fact, you can," the Queen grins toothily. "Aegon and I wish to try the dragons on the creatures, but naturally we do not want unnecessary deaths—or injuries."

Jon nods, taking her meaning quickly. "I'll make sure that none of the men loose arrows while you are flying."

"Excellent," the King claps his hands before theatrically extending one towards his wife. "Shall we, my lady?" She smirks and they soon disappear arm in arm together into the jumble of men traversing the castle yard in preparation for nightfall.

 _Huh. That was relatively painless_ , he thinks drolly.

If he is to be perfectly honest with himself, he is still a little disconcerted by these casual meetings with the King after having had the man's _tongue_ in his mouth and his hand upon his groin. As it is, he's grateful that he at least didn't come out of this encounter blushing. For once.

Then he remembers the letter and he scowls. _I'll have to ask later._

At his side, he can almost feel Tyrion Lannister getting ready to say something cutting, and so he swiftly turns about and gestures towards the winch.

"Will you be joining us atop the Wall, my lord?"

"Yes, yes. I believe I shall. I never lose an opportunity to see the dragons in action."

"I remember you telling me that you once dreamed of dragons, my lord," Jon says as they make their way into the winch. "Are they everything you hoped they would be?"

"Everything and more," the man sighs wistfully while peering into the woods intently.

Jon guesses that he is watching for the dragons to take to the air, wherever they are. Tonight will be the first time he sees them with his own eyes. He has heard a great deal about them—up to and including hearing what he believes to have been the dragons themselves rumbling and screeching their discontent in the distance—but so far they have yet to make an actual appearance that he has seen. But then, he has spent most of the day sleeping.

"Can you tell me about them?" he asks, genuinely curious. And why not? Dragons were near mythical beasts even before they went extinct.

"Where to begin?" Tyrion laughs. "You'll see them soon enough, so I shan't bother describing them physically. I will say that their personalities are intriguingly disparate from one to the next. Drogon, the Queen's mount, is probably the best behaved—but with the worst temper. He answers to Daenerys, and Daenerys alone. Rhaegal took to the King well enough, but he had a devil of a time getting the beast to listen to a word he said."

He snickers then. "I still remember the days when he would sit on the dragon's back, giving orders so _commandingly_ while that dragon would just stare blankly back at him until the King would throw up his hands and give up for the day. Ah. Good times."

"But there are three, aren't there?"

"Viserion," the dwarf nods. "Not the most well behaved, I'm afraid, but certainly the most even tempered of the lot. He does as he pleases, for the most part, and really no one can do anything about it. He follows his brothers without too much fuss, but he doesn't abide by commands—not even the Queen's."

"Is he dangerous?" Jon asks concerned, to which Tyrion snorts and throws him a look that is pure condescension.

 _Right. Stupid question._

"What I mean is does he attack allies?" he quickly amends his question while rebuking himself over the sheer absurdity of asking if a _dragon_ was _dangerous_.

 _Honestly, Jon Snow, you idiot. What will you ask next? Is rain wet? Is ice cold?_

Tyrion meanwhile chews his lip pensively. "Well," he begins slowly. "If you have happened to hear rumors of…rogue dragon attacks, Viserion is likely your culprit. Dragons don't really understand the concept of 'allies' or 'enemies'. For them, it is 'edible' and 'not-edible-but-fun-to-kill-nonetheless'. Drogon and Rhaegal are bonded to their riders. Viserion has no such...leash."

 _It's as I feared then,_ he broods.

"Speaking of leashes," Tyrion suddenly says with such gleeful relish that Jon's hackles raise at once. "I do believe there's someone who hopes to have _you_ on one soon."

"I...I don't know what you mean, Lord Tyrion," he replies, hoping he doesn't sound as caught off guard as he feels. It is a useless hope, it seems, for the Lannister's smile only widens.

"My boy," the little man laughs patronizingly. "I promise you, only a blind fool could have stood there watching the two of you interact without figuring it out. Thankfully for you, Jon Connington is a _willfully_ blind fool when it comes to his precious _'Young Griff'_ , and so I think your secret is safe from him."

"...And the Queen?" Jon asks hesitantly.

"Very much on to you," the other assures him blandly, squashing Jon's feeble hope to escape with _some_ dignity.

 _Merciful gods, what a disaster._

Tyrion must read the thought on his face, for he begins laughing all the harder. Thankfully, the winch cage reaches the top before Jon has to dig himself into a deeper hole, and while the Lannister dwarf continues to look highly entertained, he too permits the subject to go by the wayside.

Overall, Jon finds Tyrion to be good company as he wiles away the hours, mostly spending the time in the warming shed after he has made sure that the Queen's request has spread through the ranks. Lord Tyrion is a talented storyteller, he finds, the man able to spin a tale wonderfully well. By the time nightfall approaches, Jon is nearly in stitches over the tale of King Aegon's early, clumsy attempts at wooing his new Queen. Before that, it had been a retelling of Robert Baratheon ruining his brother Stannis' wedding—a very…colorful retelling.

"—And of course, quite naturally, our _dashing_ King then decided that if the lovely Daenerys could not be moved by terrible love poetry, then he would simply have to try—"

"WHITE WALKERS!"

Startled, Jon is on his feet with his hand on Longclaw before he registers that he is _on top of the Wall,_ and in very little immediate danger, even from White Walkers.

The sentry horn blows in the night as its minder hears the warning as well.

 _Uuuuuuuuuuhoooooooooo_.

Jon leaves Tyrion sitting gaping in the shed as he hurries outside. The men are scrambling to take position, their routines drilled into them after long years at the Wall fighting wildlings, wights, and Others.

"Remember!" he bellows. "No bows when the dragons take flight! Any man who looses an arrow at a dragon; the King will have to fight me to take your head first!"

 _Uuuuuuuuuuhooooooooooooooo_.

Tyrion Lannister comes following after him, edging as close as he dares to the drop off, his mismatched eyes wide and searching. It is not difficult to guess what his gaze seeks.

Jon points slightly eastward. "There. You should be able to see them gathering at the treeline if you know what you're looking for."

 _Uuuuuuuuuuuhooooooooooooooooooooooo_.

"Ah, yes, I think I do see something moving." Tyrion squints and then looks towards Jon incredulously. "Are those _spiders_?"

"Yes. The Others ride them."

The dwarf blanches visibly. "Gods be good," he mutters, looking about in search of something, though Jon doesn't know what until the man brightens and points several feet above his head at a wooden torch sconce attached to the warming shed. "Aha! If you'd be so good as to hand me that torch, Lord Snow."

Curious as to his intent, Jon fetches the torch as asked and bends at the waist to present it to the dwarf. Tyrion smiles widely as he takes it. Without his nose, it is much more difficult to make out exactly what emotions the man tries to convey, but Jon has the niggling suspicion that right now, Tyrion is doing his best to earn his nickname: The Imp.

When the little man waltzes up to the edge of the Westerosi side of the Wall and chucks the flaming torch over with a grand gesture, that impression seems rather validated.

"What are you _doing_?" Jon asks, absolutely bewildered, and runs up to watch the torch's progress. Thankfully it doesn't look as though it will land on one of the wooden structures below, they themselves standing clear to the left of the castle.

Tyrion grins unrepentantly. "Yes, sorry. The Queen asked for a torch to be thrown from the Wall as their signal that they could—"

An earsplitting roar makes half the men on the Wall drop to their knees and thoroughly drowns out Tyrion's last words.

"Shit!" Jon exclaims, snagging the dwarf by the coat and dragging him away from the ledge when the man's own startled reaction brings him dangerously close to pinwheeling himself straight over the side.

"A little warning next time would be appreciated!" he yells, still shaken, as he assesses the damage. The morbid fascination with seeing the White Walkers and their army of dead has abated for the men of the Nights Watch after years of fighting them up close and personal, and the newcomers are not so comfortable with being 700 feet in the air that they are willing to brave standing too close to the edge. Hence, Jon neither hears panicked screaming—from a man falling from the Wall or men forced to _watch_ that awful descent—nor sees any panicked flailing and falling except _away_ from the edge.

He judges that Tyrion looks sufficiently spooked by his own near death experience, so Jon deposits him beside the broken remains of a great trebuchet before running to the edge, grinning. He wants to see what the Others made of the dragon's roar.

He laughs, exhilarated, to see their advance stalled, the great ice spiders skittering nervously, much to the chagrin of their riders, if their frantic pulling at the 'reins' is anything to go by. He just hopes that they won't turn tail and run before the dragons actually arrive to test their flames.

No need to worry about that, he discerns as an enormous shadow passes overhead, blocking out the light of the moon and plunging the Wall into darkness for several impossibly long seconds. His jaw drops as he takes in the sheer size of the first creature, its dark scales making it difficult to make out except for as a huge blot of darkness. A tiny figure wearing a pure white fur that he recognizes as having been wrapped around the Queen earlier sits upon the thing's back, the fur and her long gleaming hair almost indistinguishable as both stream out behind her. She is like a fleck of starlight against a vast midnight sky—except the sky in this case is a dragon's tremendous neck and astounding wingspan.

 _That thing could damn near eat a young mammoth—whole!_

The second and third dragons are smaller and rather more easily seen, especially the pale dragon. Dazedly, he wonders what colors they are, though such a piece of information right now is as irrelevant as knowing what color small clothes their riders are wearing.

Aaand now he's thinking about the King's small clothes. Fantastic.

Shaking his head ruefully at the contemptible turn of his own thoughts, he can just pick out another figure astride the darker of the smaller dragons. He says 'smaller', but when they are both the size of a trio of mammoths all tethered together…

And then comes the dragonfire.

Gouts of strangely colored flame pour from the maws of the three dragons. Rather than normal red and orange fire, the dragons breath flames of black, gold, and yellow-orange shot with luminous green. He rubs his eyes, unable to believe what he's seeing, but the exotic view remains and begin to mix in a mesmerizing show of fiery death. But as the dragons swoop and pivot in the air, coming round for a second pass, Jon reminds himself that the only ones they are dealing death to tonight are the White Walkers. The rest of the 'casualties' of dragonfire are already dead, and the dragons are merely releasing them from their bondage.

He has heard of the Dragon Queen's moniker 'Breaker of Chains', and tonight that is exactly what she and her husband and dragons are doing: sundering the invisible leash and collar that the Others forcibly yoked the dead with.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Tyrion Lannister waddle unevenly to his side. "I said they were magnificent, didn't I?"

"Yes you did," Jon answers breathlessly, watching the landscape come alive with flame as the dead army tries to disappear into the forest, the Others leading the way on their many-legged 'steeds'. The trees catch fire, becoming enormous fonts of gold, black, and green-tinged fire that make the land beyond the Wall glow like daylight.

Magnificent really doesn't cover it.

 _I do believe that this will be the single_ shortest _battle against the Others that I've ever seen._

The two dark dragons chase after the mass of wights, igniting half the forest and making Jon genuinely question if there will be anything _left_ north of the Wall once the dragons are done. As it is, huge swaths of the forest are already crumbling to ash, and the dragons show no sign of stopping just yet.

 _If it means destroying the Others, I can live with that,_ he thinks wryly as the King and Queen's dragons weave around one another almost playfully, each of them seemingly trying to outdo the other.

 _I guess it just makes sense that a pair of fire-breathing lizards' favorite game is setting things on fi—wait a minute._

Realizing that something is missing, Jon scans the sky briefly before turning to Tyrion to ask quizzically, "Where's the third one?"

 _ **CRASH!**_

Something heavy hits him in the shoulder blades, effectively knocking him on his face, and he hears the other men on the Wall yelp in surprise and pain. Dazed, he looks blearily up, spiting blood as it pools in his mouth from where he has bitten his tongue.

 _By the gods, what was that?_

The view he is met with as his eyesight rights itself is one of confused pandemonium, the men shrieking as they dart away, climbing over the mess of wooden debris that he's quite certain wasn't there just a moment ago.

 _Did one of the catapults break? I swear, if I find that some fool was aiming a trebuchet at a dragon,_ heads _will roll._

His shoulders ache something fierce, and he's not at all sure he can regain his feet just yet. As it is, his breath comes out in a pained puff of air as he drags himself gingerly to his hands and knees. There are more sounds of wood and ice breaking and cracking though, so he forces himself to crawl around a jumble of smashed timbers as he tries to locate the source of the disturbance—and what a ludicrous understatement _that_ word is for whatever has occurred. As it happens, Tyrion Lannister answers the question for him, his voice high with alarm, though he does an admirable job of pretending otherwise.

"Ah, Viserion," Tyrion all but squeaks. "Does your mother know you're here?"

Jon cringes and begins to fight to his feet. It is, on further thought, perhaps not the wisest of decisions, but he simply must see it with his own eyes.

 _The dragon? What in the hells is that dragon doing_ up here, _when it should be_ down there _destroying wights?!_

Sure enough, crouched amongst the shattered remains of the trebuchet Jon only minutes ago left Tyrion beside, is the white dragon.

Mouth agape, Jon's eyes rove over the beast, taking in the leathery wings draping over the destroyed timbers, creamy colored but for the brilliant edging of gold that veritably glitters in the torchlight. Great armored spikes jut from its head and neck, and its teeth are like spears of polished obsidian, the longest easily the length and width of his forearm. A long, whipping tail knocks debris from the Wall with its violent back and forth lashing, it too lined with a row of sharp spikes. Most striking of all are the glowing eyes of molten-gold.

In short, every inch of the dragon is death incarnate.

And without a doubt, it is the single most beautiful, terrible thing he's ever seen in his life.

 _I was only partially right before. 'Magnificent' really,_ really _doesn't do them justice, Lord Tyrion,_ he thinks, more awed than ever as the gold eyes catch and center on his own. A high chirp comes from the creature as its head tilts inquisitively.

And then, quite suddenly, he realizes that it is also now advancing on him—fast.

"Fuck!" he swears, trance breaking just in time, and dodges backward, not tripping over the splintered debris only by the grace of the gods as he scrambles to get out of the way. Right. Now.

"Blow the horn! Blow the horn!" he calls to the men behind the dragon, trying to keep ahead of the creature's approach. He tries to duck and hide behind the warming shed, but the creature simply ambles up and over the room, making the entire structure creak ominously and the cowering occupants shriek inside. Jon blanches and dashes for the next obstacle.

"You want us to _what_ , Milord?!" comes one stunned response.

"But the dragon'll come after _us_ then!" another wails.

"I said blow the damn horn, you cravens!" he shouts, furious with their cowardice but not exactly able to blame them for it as he himself plays a harrowing game of chase with the object of their fear.

Thankfully, there is at least one other man on the Wall whose wits haven't entirely fled.

"Do as he says, you fools! You have to catch the attention of the Queen!" Tyrion Lannister yells, explaining what Jon is too preoccupied with the chore of keeping from becoming a dragon's chew toy to communicate. Jon is so glad for the man's assistance, he could kiss the Lannister dwarf.

There is much loud arguing of the merits of such a plan, and Jon curses as he tries to calculate the odds of his surviving a trip down the great switchback stair with the blasted creature following hot on his heels. Its focus is firmly fixed on him for now, but he doesn't know if the creature will take flight to harry him down the zigzagging stairway.

In the best case scenario—actually, no. There _is_ no best case scenario for this unmitigated _disaster_.

In _one_ scenario though, the beast will leave him be and instead turn its attention to the dozens of other potential targets lining the top of the Wall.

In _another,_ the dragon will follow him down—and eat him before he can reach the bottom.

And in the _final_ case, the dragon will follow him down, burn Castle Black to ash as it chases him, and _then_ it will eat him.

 _Uuuuuuuuuuuhoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo_

 _Oh thank the gods!_

He nearly collapses in relief as the horn blasts, loud and clear and unmistakable for the Targaryen's to hear. If he can just survive a few more minutes, the King and Queen will surely return and see their rogue dragon, an easily discernible pale shape bounding about on top of the Wall, and come to subdue the creature.

Just a few minutes.

But as he leaps over a pothole in the ice where the heaviest part of the trebuchet must have landed as it fell, a memory comes to him with horrifying clarity.

" _He does as he pleases, for the most part, and really no one can do anything about it,"_ he remembers Tyrion saying of the white dragon only a few hours earlier. As well as, _"He doesn't abide by commands—not even the Queen's."_

 _Oh shit._

* * *

A/N: Woodkid said it best: Run boy run!

Oh, and yes, Satin totally ships Aegon/Jon. (^.^) When I realized that Satin was acting like Jon's

Wingman and egging him on, I started laughing right there. It wasn't intentional, but I liked it once I recognized what I was doing. Lol.

Also, anybody have some good ideas as to who could make the Kingsguard and/or Queensguard? I'm having to research _a lot_ of people/events by checking their wiki pages and then hunting down the references in my books. Guh. So if people can help me by suggesting knights of good Targaryen loyalist houses, I'd be much obliged. As it is, names/places/events are all starting to blur together and give me a headache. _

* From a line in 'Way of the Shadows' by Brent Weeks. So incredible—especially for a debut novel.

** Did anyone catch my little Jurassic Park easter egg? I'm so sorry, I couldn't resist. (^.^)


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